Ship of Theseus
by Ferric
Summary: An RE0 AU where things go badly wrong for Rebecca when she ends up encountering James Marcus after getting separated from Billy. This story follows the events of the game through the last months of Raccoon City as Rebecca struggles to come to terms with what has happened and figure out a way to bring to light what Umbrella has been up to.
1. Deeper into Danger

**Notes:** I decided to expand this idea from my Teratogenesis set of one-shots. The first two chapters of this piece are short pieces from that collection with only minor edits. If you've read them feel free to skip to chapter three, which is where the actual new content starts.

o0o

Rebecca hadn't realized how much she had been relying on Billy until he was gone. It went to show just how far in over her head she was, that the criminal she was supposed to recapture was far more competent than she was. Then again, she'd never thought that she'd end up in what amounted to an actual combat situation. When she applied for the job she'd figured that working as part of a specialized police team in a quiet little city in the middle of nowhere would be easy. Besides, her skillset meant that she should have been holding a desk job or working in a lab somewhere. She hadn't taken into account that Raccoon City wouldn't have any shortage of lab technicians and that she'd be handed a gun and expected to use it. Use it against what? Nothing happened in Raccoon City.

And then everything had happened at once, the perfect storm of security breaches and biomedical research gone wrong. Throw in an escaped criminal to the mix and it was understandable why she was overwhelmed.

At least with Billy around things had still seemed somewhat sane. Now that she was on her own how crazy the things she'd seen were was finally starting to sink in. Monsters, giant bugs, zombies and director Marcus' insane grandson running around doing who knew what. The one thing she could think of that sort of made sense was that he was behind it. For whatever reason Marcus' grandson had something against Umbrella, or maybe Raccoon City in general, and she and the rest of Bravo Team had just happened to get caught up in the middle of it all.

Opening a door brought her into yet another hallway full of zombies. The zombies themselves weren't even the craziest part, the craziest part was that she was thankful for the zombies. Ever since she realized that she wasn't going to be getting a desk job like she'd expected she'd been terrified that she might have to shoot at a person, even though logically she knew the odds of that were vanishingly small. Shooting zombies was easy because there was nothing person-like about them, the way they moved, sounded, smelled, everything, it was easy to distance herself from what she was doing. Like the one she was shooting at right now, its movements were jerky and irregular, reminding her of a windup toy or a stop-motion monster in an old horror movie. She shot it in the chest and greenish black slime poured out of the wound in thick globs. They landed on the floor with a wet splat and started to ooze towards her.

She fought back a cry of disgust, it wasn't a zombie, it was another of the things she'd taken to thinking of as leech men. They didn't even make sense, leeches weren't supposed to be eusocial, and even if they were there was no reason for them to imitate the human form.

The thing swung at her with an arm that was little more than a stretchy tentacle, but she was far enough away that she was able to dodge out of the way and back out through the door she had entered by. Slamming it behind her she let out a sigh of relief. That was probably the only good thing about the leech men, they couldn't open doors.

"What now?" she asked herself out loud, wishing that Billy was there with her. It was insane, she was so desperate that the company of a war criminal, a man guilty of multiple murders, was preferable to being alone.

A laugh answered her.

"Who's there?" she spun around and found herself face to face with Marcus' grandson.

The man was looking at her as though she was some particularly fascinating spectacle. It was a sort of look she was used to though, she got it a lot due to her age and petite build. It was no secret that a lot of the other S.T.A.R.S members thought she was hopelessly under qualified.

He broke into a smile that was, if not friendly, at least not hostile, and asked a question of his own, "What exactly do you hope to accomplish here?"

"I…uh…" she hated being put on the spot like this. She was the one with the gun, a member of an elite police team and an unarmed madman was making her feel like a helpless little girl, "I should be asking you the same question."

Steadying herself she kept the gun aimed at his head. She knew that she should have been aiming for center mass, that was what you were supposed to do, but at this range she wasn't exactly wrong to try to go for a headshot, was she? Marcus' grandson stared at her, not at all intimidated.

"I'm intend to continue my research, I've as good as had my revenge," he said dismissively, going so far as to turn his back to her, "Umbrella has no way of recovering from this."

"So you were the one who made all the monsters?" she took a step towards him, not sure if she intended to grab him and make him turn around or not.

"All of the monsters?" he turned to look at her, his expression one of dry amusement, "Not all of them, not even most of them. They were made here using research stolen from me. I simply let them out."

It made sense, she'd seen the labs, the cages and holding tanks, even before all that she'd had an idea of the supplies being shipped up to the research facilities. Even worse, it made S.T.A.R.S. make sense. There was no reason for a quiet little city to have an organization like it, but if there were monsters that might escape…

"What exactly is going on here?" she was doing it again, the same thing she'd done with Billy she was doing with Marcus' grandson, giving him the benefit of the doubt when there was no good reason to do so. She wasn't cut out for this sort of thing and the moment it was all over she was going to resign.

The moment it was all over. All she had to do was survive until then.

"You really are inquisitive, aren't you?" his smile became subtly less menacing. It was still a long way from friendly, but progress was progress, "What would you say if I were to show you?"

"I…"

"My research that is," he continued, ignoring her attempt at responding, "I think I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough."

He brushed past her and opened the door she had just come out of.

"Wait!" she finally found her voice, "There's a -"

"Don't worry about it," he cut her off. Sure enough the leech man made no move to attack him and when it reached towards her he simply put a hand on its shoulder and watched as it dissolved into a puddle of leeches. The individual parasites slithered away, disappearing down through grates in the floor, "They're failures, my earliest attempts at replicating a most remarkable and unexpected result of my research. I think I've figured out what went wrong though."

As he spoke he bent down to pick up one of the last remaining leeches. Holding it carefully in the palm of his hand he ran a finger along its slimy body as though it were a pet rather than a disgusting worm. Smiling he held it out to her. Somehow the thing sensed her and raised the front half of its body, revealing a large mouth ringed with rows of black, hook-like teeth. It swayed back and forth, stretching to nearly twice its length in its attempt to get to her.

Covering her mouth she struggled not to gag.

Shrugging, Marcus' grandson slipped it into the pocket of the ragged, stained lab coat that he was wearing, which probably explained where a lot of the stains had come from, "They want to mimic the human form, but they can't, at least not properly."

"I've seen," she said weakly, "But why would you want them to do that?"

"Because they've done it before and I want to see if I can make it happen again, deliberately," he spoke as though this were the most obvious thing in the world, though considering the rest of what she'd seen of the research that had been taking place, it made about as much sense as any of it.

The whole time they'd been talking he'd kept walking down the hall and she'd been following. He stopped when they reached a door that she hadn't noticed before. When he opened it she looked past him and saw that it opened into an access hallway narrow enough that if they were to go into it they'd have to walk single file.

The hall was totally dark, not even emergency lighting inside.

Marcus' grandson entered without hesitation.

"This way, I've got a makeshift lab set up in an old storage room. It's where I've been raising more leeches," he held out his hand, gesturing for her to follow, "The latest batch will be hatching soon."

Without thinking she grabbed it and held on. His grip was cold and slick, probably slime left over from the leech he'd been holding earlier. It was also surprisingly strong.

She was starting to piece things together. Director Marcus had brought his grandson into work with him because nepotism was very much a thing, especially in big companies like Umbrella. So Marcus' grandson had been working on some project involving colonial leeches, which, if she was to be honest with herself, made more sense than anything she'd encountered so far. Animal behavior and the modification thereof was an actual field of study that had potential. Something must have gone wrong though, maybe Marcus' grandson had been let go by the company after Marcus died, but he'd managed to continue his research in secret, blaming Umbrella for firing him and not letting him take credit for what he'd worked on with his grandfather. His response was extreme, but no more so than Harry Harlow who'd decided to single handedly ruin the field of animal behavior study just because he was angry and he could. Marcus' grandson wanted to show her his pet leeches, which, in the scheme of things was far less horrifying than anything Harlow had done. That she was using Harlow's work as a measure of what wasn't crazy went to show how badly wrong things were.

"I think the problem is twofold," Marcus' grandson spoke, his voice confident despite the total darkness engulfing them once the door swung closed behind her, "The subjects I used were already infected with the Tyrant Virus, though in my defense I had assumed that the infection would work to facilitate the process considering that the virus was created by using sequences taken from leech DNA to modify the original Progenitor strain. In later experiments I infected my pets with the modified virus, so seemed logical that it would make the subject more receptive to them. Instead I believe it only served to compromise the subject, encouraging the leeches to overtake them before creating a proper framework for their mimicry. They can manage the basic shape, but all the finer details are lost. A further confounding variable might be that the leeches I'm using have already imprinted. They may be trying to mimic my form rather than that of the subject and, as a result, not succeeding in either."

"Wait, imprinted?" her mind was spinning. Imprinting was a thing, it happened in birds, but she was pretty sure that it required the animal to have an actual brain and some semblance of self-awareness.

"Yes," Marcus' grandson laughed, "It was so unexpected when it happened that at first I'd simply assumed that they were responding to my feeding them, but there was far more to it than that. Once I started feeding them live prey I realized that their response to me was different. By that time it was obvious that they worked together as a single cohesive whole, but what I had yet to catch on to was that they reacted to me as though I was part of that whole."

The scattered notes they'd found in the training facility hadn't belonged to Director Marcus, or at least not all of them. Some of it had been from the work of his grandson. It was all impossible of course, except she'd seen what he'd done to the leech man. Curiosity drove her on, and besides, she hadn't been attacked by anything since accompanying him. Maybe if she could make it until dawn with him she'd have a chance. If she made it until dawn she decided that she was done. She'd get out of the city and reveal everything she'd seen to the proper authorities, whoever they were in a situation like this.

The only sign that there was anything up ahead was the thin line of dull red light along the floor. It was so faint that she didn't even see it until Marcus' grandson stopped.

There was a moment of confusion until she realized that she could hear the sound of water and the hum of pumps. This must have been where he continued his research in secret after his grandfather died. Being in the dark with a madman was no more or less terrifying than anything else she'd been through so far, the only difference was that this was at least interesting. Everything so far had been all monsters and running, this at least had logic behind it. Besides, if what he was saying was true she was about to get a tour of a lab in which a major scientific breakthrough had happened. Maybe when it was all over, when she quit S.T.A.R.S. she'd be able to use what she'd seen to get a job at some reputable place. For what he'd done Marcus' grandson was bound to end up getting arrested, but something would have to happen with what he'd been working on. She wasn't about to continue Marcus' leech work herself, but there was sure to be someone who would interested and find value in it. After all, if it worked with leeches it might work with other invertebrates and that had potential. Bees that recognized their keepers and wouldn't sting, or maybe be used like farm animals, pollinating crops. Swarms of ladybugs working as natural pest control or grasshoppers that only ate weeds. That sort of thing could actually help people.

She could hear keys jangling as he opened what sounded like a padlock. Even hidden away he was paranoid.

Finally the door opened and for the first time since entering the hall she could see. Heat lights filled the small room with a warm red glow. It was ominous, how the red light made all the shadows even darker, but it was still light.

The entire room was filled with tanks and tubs of water. All of them contained leeches, swimming back and forth, stuck to the glass, oozing over the rims and sliding along the floor. Marcus' grandson strode confidently into the room while she stepped cautiously after him, terrified of misstepping and feeling something squish underfoot, or even worse, slipping in one of the puddles of slime and falling. There were leeches all over the floor and she was sure that if she were to fall they'd all start crawling her way.

Marcus took the time to check the water level of several tanks, reaching in to move leeches from tank to tank, before motioning for her to come over.

"This is it," he smiled, looking down into a tub of water that was nearly waist high, "The latest batch. They're going to be a success, I can feel it."

Unlike the others it had a lid. There were dozens of leeches sitting on top and Marcus' grandson carefully removed them one by one, returning them to the tanks lining the walls. Maybe he was right about them recognizing him, because as far as she could tell not a single one of them tried to bite him. When the last leech was safely put away he smiled at her, his face a mask of shadows in the irregular lighting, and took the lid off

There were no leeches in the tank, at least not any she could see. Instead looked like it was full of small, round beads.

"Eggs?" she asked, leaning in for a closer look, half expecting to feel Marcus' grandson's hands on her back, shoving her in.

Instead he leaned over next to her, "Yes, and they're already hatching."

Now that he'd said as much she realized that she could see fine black ribbons swimming between the eggs.

"What now?" she wondered, simultaneously fascinated and repulsed.

"You're going to feed them!" he rubbed his hands together with almost childish glee.

Her hand immediately went to her gun, which she'd holstered during their walk through the darkness, afraid of what might have happened if she were to trip while holding it.

Marcus' grandson had already turned away from her by the time she unholstered it, leaving her feeling embarrassed that her first thought was that he had intended to push her in with the leeches. Instead he was putting on a pair of thick leather gloves, the kind that went all the way up to the elbow, like someone might use when handling a dangerous animal.

"To avoid contamination," he explained, reaching into what she had thought was another tank of leeches on a shelf higher than the rest, but she'd been mistaken in her assumption. Rather than a leech, he pulled out a large rat which he killed with a practiced ease.

"Hold on to this," he shoved it against her chest and she reflexively grabbed at it, "This way it smells like you when you give it to them. They have to know that you're the one feeding them."

He held her hands shut over the rat. Too shocked to do anything else she did as told. Given the situation following his instructions was probably the safest thing she could to.

"How long?" she wasn't sure if she was asking how long she needed to hold onto the rat or how long the imprinting process took.

"It should be immediate," he was now holding her hand in both of his, tight enough that the dead rat was being crushed, "These leeches are at the final stage of the process, unlike the ones that I started my research with. They're far smarter, far more eager. I would have succeeded in replicating the process already if not for using contaminated subjects and unthinkingly contaminating the leeches themselves. Enough of them should have hatched by now. Go!"

Letting go of her hands he pushed her towards the tank.

"What do I do?" she stared down at the eggs and leeches undulating at the water's surface.

"Hold it in for them to eat, the smell should encourage the stragglers to emerge," he placed his hands on her shoulders, encouraging her, "Slowly."

Afraid that dropping the rat in would make a splash and send leeches flying in all directions, she carefully lowered the dead rat in by its tail. The water churned as the leeches swarmed the thing, slithering on top of each other in their eagerness. She didn't even get the rat halfway into the water before it was completely covered. They squirmed and writhed on top of it and without thinking she started to raise her hand back up. The leeches clung to it like tar, a sheet of them trailing back down into the water so that others could climb up and continue to feed. Impossible as it seemed, Marcus' grandson had been right, they were working together, some acting as a living ladder so that others could get to the rat.

Something wet brushed her finger and she dropped the rat with a gasp.

Marcus' grandson laughed, "They're very excited about their first meal."

That much was obvious, a floating matt of leeches washed over the rat, pulling it down under the water.

"Hold your hand over the water," he urged gently.

"Why?" she shuddered.

"Just do it!"

His tone left no room for argument. She did as told and watched as the leeches congregated under the shadow of her hand.

"They're still hungry," she laughed nervously.

"Yes," he agreed and stepped away from her, back to the tank from which he'd taken the rat. Apparently he'd been prepared for this, because he took out a second one, broke its neck and tossed it to her, "Best to let them eat their fill. No sense in tempting any accidents."

This time the leeches actually rose up to meet the rat.

Marcus hurried back to her side, "Hold your free hand over the tank, watch what they do."

Terrified of what would happen, but even more afraid that Marcus' grandson would do if she didn't, she held her hand far above the tank. The leeches didn't react.

"Lower," Marcus' grandson ordered.

Emboldened by the lack of response she let her hand drop another few inches.

Nothing happened.

"Keep going, I'll tell you when to stop."

Slowly, cautiously, she continued to lower hand, inch by fearful inch, until it was at the level at which the leeches had gone for the rat. They swam beneath her hand, following its movements, but none of them broke the surface.

"What's going on?" she whispered fearful that at any moment they'd rise out of the water and latch on to her hand.

"They know you're not food," he put a hand on her shoulder, "More than that, they already know that you're the one who feeds them. This is far better than I'd hoped. Put your hand in with them."

"No!" she gasped. That was taking things much farther than she wanted to risk. Even if he was right and they wouldn't attack her, it was still a tank full of leeches. His expression darkened and his grip on her tightened painfully. If she didn't think fast he was going to force her, "The ones that just hatched might still be hungry. Shouldn't we make sure they've all had a chance to eat?"

"Of course!" he let go of her, seemingly pleased in her apparent interest in the leeches' wellbeing. Going back to the rat tank he pulled out a third, "This is the last one. After this we'll either have to get them something more to eat or see if they're ready to hunt on their own. I think your friend survived."

"Billy?" she asked, caught off guard by his sudden non sequitur.

"The one with the tattoos and long hair," he said with a shrug.

He was one to talk, but she refrained from commenting as she took the last rat from him. This time the leeches responded slower, the ones that reached the rat first dropping off after a moment.

"They're bringing back food to the others," Marcus' grandson explained.

And that was exactly what they were doing. The leeches that climbed up onto the rat were passing morsels to the ones still emerging from their eggs. He was right, they were engaging in actual eusocial behavior, impossible as that should have been.

"How does it even work?" she wondered, amazed by what she was seeing.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, "I created the Tyrant strain, but unfortunately it's as much a mystery to me as to anyone else. I've made far more progress with it though, thanks to my leeches."

"They certainly are…" she hesitated, trying to find the right word, "Impressive."

"You have no idea. I had no idea," he laughed bitterly, "At least not until Wesker and his sniveling friend betrayed me."

Her shock at his implicating Wesker in whatever had happened was nothing compared to the terror that came at what followed.

"They had me assassinated, or at least Wesker did. Birkin was far too much of a coward to even dream of something like that."

In the course of everything that had happened she'd somehow managed to forget that Marcus' grandson was completely insane.

He saw the look on her face and laughed, "I'm not bitter about that. I'd thank them for the discovery it brought about, if not for the fact that they stole my research. That I cannot forgive them for."

"What discovery?" she said quickly, hoping to keep him talking long enough to figure out what to do. He had to mean attempted assassination, or perhaps he was being figurative and he was talking about them ruining his career.

"Birkin came in to talk to me while I was working with my pets, asking questions about them and distracting me. He knew that my one weakness was my beloved leeches and he was willing to indulge an old man like that, at least that was the impression he gave. Little did I know that it was a trick, if he enjoyed hearing me out it was only because he imagined what he would do with my findings, to my dear pets. Wesker came in some time later, but said nothing. He and Birkin were inseparable, so it was hardly unusual for him to show up, and I made the mistake of ignoring him. Wesker wasn't interested in my research, or so I'd thought. He tended to be more hands on and found my work too academic for his liking. That was when I found out that research wasn't the only area where he liked to do things hands on. He had a gun with him and while I had my back to him he shot me," Marcus' grandson stopped to shake his head.

He was crazy, that was the only explanation, but at the same time Wesker handpicked all S.T.A.R.S. members and there had to have been something he'd seen in her. On the few occasions they'd spoken he'd been interested in her field of study at college, mentioning that he'd been impressed by how young she was when she graduated. Hints had been dropped that he might be able to get her a position helping with field research if she wanted, which was part of the reason she'd stuck it out in S.T.A.R.S. despite how woefully unprepared she'd been for the reality of the job. So Wesker being involved in research made sense and maybe he had stolen Marcus' grandson's work.

"So maybe Wesker was as much of a coward as Birkin, a disappointment to Oswall I'm sure" he continued, "Not that it matters. When I fell to the floor my pets escaped. Wesker must have mistaken their attempts at protecting me for an attack, because he didn't bother checking to see if I was actually dead. Or maybe his contempt was so great that he couldn't imagine that I would be a threat. I'll admit, I don't know what followed, for I quickly lost consciousness. By the time I woke up in disused, partially flooded room, not far from here actually, they were already gone. Abandoned by everyone save my pets. They were diligent in their efforts to save me, using their own bodies to staunch the flow of blood from my injuries, feeding me, and giving me the strength to stay alive. There was only so much they could do though, I was an old man after all, and between my injuries and the filth in which I'd been left to die, my strength couldn't last. Towards the end I could feel them struggling to keep my heart beating, to help me draw every single breath I took. It wasn't through my own strength that I survived, but through their devotion. I had created them, elevated them beyond what they would have been otherwise and they did the same for me. When I was finally able to get up the sight of myself left me shocked. Not only was I alive, I had been restored to my prime."

Rebecca wanted to call him on what he was saying, to point out how crazy he was being, instead she found her mind sticking on one thing, "So your greatest success with the leeches, what you said you've been trying to replicate…"

It was stupid, but she had to know, to hear out the story to the end so that she could find closure and put an end to the madness.

"Yes, what I want to replicate is not what I accomplished with them, but what they accomplished with me," he beamed, spreading his arms wide, "I've been given a second chance, an opportunity to continue my research, but more than that I feel I owe it to my pets to recreate the triumph we reached together. I'll admit, from the moment I first saw you I was inspired, that was the reason I sought you out."

"What do you mean?" she stood up trying to see if there was room for her to escape, but he was in front of her and the tank of leeches was directly behind.

"I told you already," he took a step closer, "I didn't want to risk spoiling my newest batch of pets with a subject infected with the Tyrant strain. So far that has only resulted in partial success. I think a healthy subject is what they need and you are undeniably healthy, among other things," in the red light it was hard to tell, but he looked embarrassed, "That is to say, you're intelligent, inquisitive, a perfect assistant in my continued research, physical aspects have nothing to do with it. You're young enough to by my granddaughter after all. If I'd had any children, that is, but my work took up far too much of my time for anything like that. My pets are the closest thing I have to family and I'm so proud of them."

"What are you going to do?" she stammered, reaching for her gun.

"Ask you to get in the tank with them," he said as though she was being deliberately slow to catch on, "If that doesn't work we might need to take more extreme measures."

Despite his reassurance that the leeches wouldn't attack her the last thing she intended to do was take a bath with them. Taking a deep breath she drew her gun and switched off the safety. It was going to be just like shooting the zombies, or so she told herself, and besides, he was crazy and going to kill her.

Unfortunately she was right, she shot him twice in the chest and he hardly responded. There was a spray of slime, a dark stain spreading across the front of his lab coat, but he didn't stagger or gasp in pain. Part of the stain broke away, a large leech crawling out of the wound.

Maybe he wasn't crazy, or at least maybe some of what he had said was true. Maybe the leeches had saved him, maybe he was Director Marcus.

"You shouldn't have done that," he sounded more frustrated than anything else, and before she could react he closed the distance between them and grabbed the hand in which she held her gun.

Despite her best efforts it wasn't much of a fight. He pushed her backwards until she was up against the tank, then he began to twist her wrist. She expected him to try and force the gun out of her hand, but instead he brought her hand around until she was pointing it at herself and forced her to squeeze off two more shots. The first hit her leg and was less painful than she'd expected, an impact like she'd been punched, but little more. Then the second got her in the stomach.

If not for how he was holding onto her she would have fallen to the floor, unable to move because of how bad it hurt. As it was, he pulled her up by her arm, cradling her head in his hand so that she could see his face as he slowly, carefully, lowered her down towards the tank of leeches.

Her back hit the wall of the tank, warm water lapped at the back of her head. If not for him holding on she wouldn't have been able to keep her head above the water. He let go of her arm and it dropped into the tank with a splash. Smooth, soft things slid around her fingers, rubbing against her, their movements cautious, curious. The leeches.

She tried to scream, but she wasn't sure if any sound came out. All she could hear was a horrible ringing in her ears and somehow, the sounds of the water. He hooked his arm behind her knees and swung her legs over, into the tank.

The blood from her injuries sent the leeches into a frenzy, she could feel them against her leg, her stomach. Bile filled the back of her throat and she began to choke. She struggled as Marcus moved to hold her down, slopping water out of the tank, but not leeches. Like before they were working together, clinging to each other as they slid over her body, under her clothes. Their touch was gentle, not at all what she'd expected. She could hardly feel their teeth as they lapped at the gunshot wounds. The pain started to fade, leaving her numb. She was aware of pressure on her chest, Marcus' hand holding her down, and of the leeches investigating the wound to her stomach. It was the worse of the two and far more interesting to them.

Rather than anything useful, like the unarmed combat part of her S.T.A.R.S. training, the words of Professor Small came back to her. It had been the first day of Biology three-oh-something, Plant Biology: 'In this class we're going to talk about sex. Everyday it's going to be sex, sex, sex because that's what biology comes down to. Sex.' She'd liked Professor Small a lot, even if he was the kind of Professor who tried too hard to be 'cool'. If only his statement hadn't been so applicable to this situation.

If Marcus was the leeches then his interest in recreating what they'd done to him wasn't purely academic, the way he was looking at her made that much obvious. He, or maybe they, wanted to make something like them for purely primal, instinctual, reasons. Marcus wanted to experiment, the leeches wanted to reproduce and the two worked together towards the same, horrible goal.

At least it didn't hurt any more, even if she was choking. Maybe that was for the best though, the leeches were swimming around her face, crawling up onto her, but as long as she was choking they wouldn't be able to get into her mouth. Then Marcus let go of her head and she slid beneath the water. It rushed into her mouth and nose, carrying with it slime and leech eggs, but no leeches. They were all forming a raft over her head, blocking Marcus' smiling face from her sight, trapping a shimmering layer of air beneath them. The leeches began to close in like a shroud, pressing the pocket of air against her face, but it was too late, she was already drowning.

The last thought that came to her as she passed out was that the fluttery, wiggly feeling in her stomach wasn't butterflies. For some reason it seemed like the funniest thing imaginable.

o0o

The sound of footsteps woke her up.

She screamed before she even knew why she was so afraid. Then she remembered and screamed again, louder. It was Marcus, back to…

"Easy," the man standing by the door spoke, lowering something, a gun, as he did, "Take it easy, it's me."

Billy, it was Billy, not Marcus. Only a war criminal.

She was safe.

She blinked several times, wincing, but made no attempt to get up. She ached, everywhere, but there was more to it than that. Everything felt wrong, not just the situation, being trapped in the basement of a research facility, but something was wrong with her, "Hi Billy. I…I thought you were Marcus coming back."

"You must have been having one hell of a dream," he laughed, and started walking over to where she was laying down. Bending down he held a hand out to her, "Are you okay? Can you get up?"

She laughed back at him, "I think…"

When she attempted to sit up she slipped. Water splashed. She was still in the water, still with the leeches.

He reached in, unafraid of the leeches, and grabbed her, pulling her out of the water. She could feel them though, crawling all over her, biting, squirming, clinging to her skin. If she didn't get them off they'd eat her alive.

"Calm down," his grip tightened and he shook her, "You're safe now."

"No! The leeches!" she sobbed, "They're all over me! I can feel them!"

She rubbed at her arms, her face, trying to get them off, but they clung to her, refusing to be dislodged.

He grabbed her holding them so tightly it hurt. Everything hurt and she could still feel them. Why didn't he care, why wasn't he trying to help get rid of them? The next thing he said answered that question.

"Rebecca, calm down. There aren't any leeches. It was a dream."

She looked around, expecting them to be crawling everywhere. Not a single leech remained. The tanks were full of cloudy liquid, but there was nothing swimming in them, on the walls, on the floor, in the tank Billy had pulled her out of, there wasn't a single leech to be found anywhere. Maybe Billy was right, maybe it had been a dream. Had she hit her head somewhere and passed out? She was alive, so that was a strong argument in favor of it having been a nightmare. Except that didn't explain how she'd ended up where she was, covered in slime.

Rebecca looked at him, opened and closed her mouth several times as she thought of and rejected dozens of things she could have said, then looked down at herself. He was right, there were no leeches, no sign of them other than the slime and fragments of egg casings sticking to her. Was that what she had felt on her? No, she could feel things squirming and even if they were gone, they had to have gone somewhere. That many leeches couldn't have vanished, at least not the newly hatched ones. Marcus might have taken the adult leeches with him, but why would he have taken the newly hatched ones unless…

Had his experiment been a failure? Was it that the leeches hadn't really imprinted on her and had left with him? She could almost believe that, except…

"See," Billy smiled reassuringly, "No leeches. Like I said, you must have been dreaming."

"No," she whispered, staring down at the two holes in her clothing, one in her shirt over her stomach, the other in the leg of her pants, near her thigh. Through them she could see her skin, clean and unbroken. "Look."

It took him several seconds to notice, "Alright, maybe something tore your clothes a little, but whatever it was, it didn't break the skin."

Of course, it wouldn't make sense to him, he hadn't been there when it happened and now they looked like nothing, but she'd been shot, twice, and she was fine now.

It didn't make sense, none of it made any sense. She was cold and wet and she hurt everywhere and she could still feel them on her, wriggling against her skin, but when she looked they weren't there.

She could feel them, but she couldn't see them.

They were inside her.

Trying and failing to hold back a scream, she threw her arms around Billy and started crying. The leeches were inside her, she was going to die, eaten from the inside out.

"Take it easy," Billy wrapped his arms around her, not understanding what had happened, because how could he? "Once you're ready we can get out of here."


	2. Monsters Inside Me

**Notes:** Once again, this chapter isn't really new content, it's taken straight form Teratogenesis with only minor edits. Chapter three is the new content so feel free to skip to there.

o0o

Somehow, she managed to pull herself together enough to get to her feet. It wasn't Billy's reassurances, the reassurances of a murderer didn't count for much, though the way he acted around her it was hard for her to believe that he'd killed all those people. He seemed like such a nice person, which was supposed to be what they always said about murderers, wasn't it?

Murderer or not, he'd stayed there with her, holding her until she was able to stop crying and start thinking. She couldn't stay there, waiting for whatever was going to happen to happen, she had to do something, find Marcus, escape the training facility, find if anyone else had survived, something.

So she'd let Billy help her to her feet and out into the hall. He'd let her lean against him until she felt steady enough to walk on her own and together they continued through the facility, trying to find a way out and more often than not instead encountering zombies and monsters.

"Stop!" Rebecca grabbed Billy before he could open the door, "There's one of them in there!"

"One of what?" he stopped to look warily at the door, hand hovering inches from the knob.

"The leech men," she closed her eyes as she spoke, trying not to think about what had happened in the room where Billy had found her, "Don't you hear it?"

Except as soon as she finished speaking she knew what the answer would be. He didn't hear it because it wasn't making any noise. She hadn't even heard it, she just knew it was there. Just like she could feel the leeches, even though they'd mostly stopped moving, she could tell that the leech man was there. Itching under her skin, itching in the back of her mind.

Billy didn't even answer her question, instead he looked at her, "Hey, take it easy."

"What?" she stared blankly back, not sure what had prompted the comment or the look of concern.

"Stop it," he put a hand on her arm, at which point she realized that she'd been worrying at the hole in her shirt with her free hand.

"Sorry," she backed away and looked down, not at the floor, but at the second hole in her clothing, the one in her pants leg. Two holes with no sign of injury beneath. Billy hadn't asked her to explain and she didn't know how to even try. She wanted to tell him what had happened, how she'd followed Marcus into the room and what he'd done, but she hadn't, because how would she explain it? She'd been shot, attacked by leeches, drowned, except one of those things wasn't true. The leeches hadn't attacked her. Since Billy had found her she'd replayed those moments over and over again, how the leeches had swarmed to the bullet holes, working their undulating, thread-like bodies deep inside the injuries, how they closed over her face in a solid sheet. That was the last thing she could remember until Billy found her.

She'd woken up in a panic, still able to feel the leeches all over her.

Billy had reassured her that there weren't any, that she was imagining things. There hadn't been a single leech anywhere in the room, but she could still feel them, wriggling and squirming. She'd tried to show him, but there was nothing to see.

Even now she was able to feel them and it took all her effort not to rub at her arms, or scratch at her stomach and leg, where she'd been shot even though there was no sign of it other than the holes in her shirt and pants. There wasn't even blood, the leeches had licked it all away.

Billy was still looking at her.

"I'm fine," she gave what she hoped was a convincing smile, "Were just going to need to find another way."

"That's the quickest way out," Billy glanced meaningfully at the door, "We go through there and then we can get to the woods. Besides, it's probably just a regular zombie."

Somewhere along the line their plan had gone from getting to the bottom of what was happening to simply getting away and she was fine with that. Yes, she was letting Billy take control of the situation, the exact opposite of what she should have been doing, but Billy actually knew what he was doing. Once things were safer she could try and regain control of things, but right now safety seemed a long way off, especially when Billy had his hand on the doorknob again.

"We can't," she begged, gripping at her own arms and trying to make the horrible squirming feeling stop. The leeches were still there, swimming beneath her skin, they knew what was on the other side of the door and it had them excited. They probably wanted to join up with it.

"Even if there's one of them they're slow," from his tone it was obvious that Billy thought she was imagining things, that all the leeches were imaginary, "We can run and get past it before it has the chance to grab either of us."

"No!"

The leech man must have heard her because as she shouted it slammed into the door. The soft squelching sound of the impact made it clear that she was right about what it was.

"Alright, change of plans," Billy grimaced.

She was about to let out a sigh of relief only to realize that he was taking off the backpack he had picked up somewhere and rummaging around in it. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for, a bottle and a torn scrap of fabric. While they'd been apart he'd replenished his supply of Molotov cocktails, a good thing since the gun she'd been carrying was nowhere to be found. They'd searched the leech room, but other than the empty shell casings there wasn't a trace of it, yet another thing that Billy hadn't asked her to explain.

He took a lighter out of his pocket and took a few steps back from the door, "When I give the word open it and get out of the way."

That was something she could manage. She didn't want to even look at the leech man, but getting away from it was something she could do without needing to look at it. All she had to do was move straight back.

Closing her eyes she turned the knob.

The leech man slammed into the door again, knocking it open with enough force that it hit her in the face. Tears welled up in her eyes from the pain and she fell to the floor. Luckily the monster ignored her entirely, shambling past her. She could hear Billy shouting, trying to draw its attention, something she was grateful for because all she could focus on was the pain she was in.

She brought her hands up to her nose and wasn't surprised to find that it was bleeding freely, nor was she surprised that even the most cautious attempts at touching it made the pain even worse. Her nose was broken, but that wasn't the worst part of it. It wasn't even the way the blood made it hard to breathe.

No, the worst part was easily how she could feel things moving in the blood, crawling up her face and trying to get back in. That part didn't hurt, in fact the pain seemed to diminish as the leeches did whatever it was that they were doing. She could feel them wiggling in her nose, making it even harder to breathe, until suddenly, she felt cartilage and bone start sliding back into position. They were trying to fix her broken nose, holding everything in place so it could heal properly. It was disgusting, but at the same time she couldn't help but notice that the pain was fading.

Cautiously she poked at her nose, the leeches were all inside so she couldn't feel their slimy little bodies, just sticky trails of blood that were already starting to dry. The leeches had stopped the bleeding.

Blinking tears from her eyes she looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood from her nose and in the blood she could see at least half a dozen fine black strands writhing in the drying blood. She wanted to clench her fists, squish them, but she was afraid to. What if in doing so she provoked the rest of them to attack? They were all inside her and if they wanted to they could tear her apart from the inside.

Across the room the leech man hissed and thrashed as it died in fire. Leeches dripped off its body, slithering away in all directions. One of them inched towards her. The leeches in her palm aligned like compass needles, two of them actually rearing up. Small as they were it was hard to tell, but she had the feeling that their mouths were open, tiny hooked fangs scratching at the air. Taking a chance she stomped down on the leech oozing across the floor. Instantly the leeches in her palm relaxed and resumed their aimless wiggling as they searched for a way back inside. They were jealous little things then, or if that was giving them too much credit, they were at least protective.

Beneath her skin the leeches mirrored the movements of the ones stranded on her palm. They could sense each other and were interacting in some way. She could see her skin twitching from their movements, then suddenly, painlessly the ones on her palm began to burrow. There was no pain, just a slight feeling of pressure, then they were gone. All that remained was the blood that had already been there and, if she looked very closely, maybe the slightest swelling to show where they were using their bodies to seal the injury. She rubbed at her palm and the leeches responded to the touch by pressing against the surface of her skin.

"Are you okay?"

She'd been so engrossed in watching the leeches that she didn't realize that Billy was standing next to her, offering her a hand up, until he'd spoken.

She looked up at him and immediately turned away, to stare at the sizzling remains of the leech man. She wasn't going to end up like that, Marcus hadn't ended up like that and he'd said his goal was to make someone like him. He'd said a lot of other things too, but so far she seemed fine, except for the obvious.

"Rebecca?"

He was starting to sound worried which made her feel even worse. How pathetic was she that the criminal she had tried to apprehend felt bad for her?

"The door hit my nose," she said quietly.

Kneeling down in front of her, Billy looked at her face, "There's a lot of blood, but it doesn't look broken."

"I know," she looked down at the floor, "It just scared me and…never mind."

As much as she wanted to tell him what had happened while they were separated she couldn't. There was nothing he could do to help and there was no way he would believe her, which was probably for the best. Rubbing at her face one last time she allowed Billy to help her to her feet and walk her to the door.

Like that it was over. They were outside and it was almost dawn. If she wanted to she could follow through with her original plan of finding the others and resign. That seemed like the best course of action, except for one detail, she had no idea where Billy was going other than into the woods in the opposite direction of where she planned on going.

"Wait!" she hurried after him.

He stopped and looked at her, his expression unreadable, "Why?"

"Where are you going?" after all they'd been through together she would have expected that he at least would have explained what his plan was rather than leaving her in the dark.

"Away from here," he shrugged, "I figure this is my best chance."

"But we need to go that way," she gestured back in the direction of the mansion, "That's where the team is meeting up."

"Where your team is meeting up," he corrected, "Which is why I'm going this way."

"Oh…"

"Don't try to follow me," his hand was at his side as he spoke, resting on his pistol. The meaning was clear, if she let him go he'd let her go as well, otherwise he wouldn't hesitate to shoot her.

Trying to stop him was useless, especially when he was the one with the gun. She'd almost managed to forget that they'd only been working together out of necessity and now that they were safe their goals diverged radically. All she could do was watch him walk away into the predawn gloom.

She knew that she'd let him get away without even trying, but what good would trying have done her?

Struggling not to cry she made her way through the woods to the mansion.

Luck was with her and nothing attacked her on the way there, except she knew that luck had nothing to do with it. If there were monsters out there they were probably after other things.

The mansion itself was in disarray, blood everywhere, but none of it was fresh. Whatever had happened hadn't been recent. That meant she was probably the first of the team to arrive. Logically she should stay in one place and wait, but the thought of waiting alone and unarmed in a building filled with who knew what was terrifying.

She told herself that she was going to look for something to use as a weapon, but she knew that even if she found something she wouldn't be any better off than she was now. What she really needed was a place to hide and wait while she gathered her thoughts and figured out what to do once the others arrived, or didn't arrive, which though unthinkable, was far more likely.

Taking care to avoid any of the halls and rooms where she heard any noises, she made her way to what must have the servant's quarters, and there she found a bedroom that wasn't in as terrible shape as the rest of the place.

Closing the door behind her she sat down on the bed, intending to simply gather her thoughts and figure out what to.

Beneath her skin the leeches squirmed.

She rubbed at her arms, feeling them move back and forth, following the motion of her hands, just like they had in the tank of water. Even inside her they responded to her. Marcus had said that they had imprinted on her, because she had fed them. What would happen if they got hungry again? Could she starve them out of her or would they turn on her and eat her from the inside out? She shuddered and rocked on the bed, wrapping her arms around herself. How was she supposed to feed them? Since they were inside her would they behave like internal parasites, robbing food from her? Or would they still be leeches and drink her blood? Probably not. As many of them as there must have been inside her, she wasn't feeling any of the signs of blood loss. So they were probably more like tapeworms or roundworms then. Once it was over she could get treated with whatever it was they used to kill intestinal parasites and she'd be fine.

It was just that there were an awful lot of leeches in her. What would happen when they all died? Blood sepsis most likely.

No, she wasn't going to think about that, not now at least.

Instead she got up and went to the small washroom adjacent to the bedroom. There she turned on the tap and was relieved to discover that the water was still running. She let the water warm up before washing the blood and slime from her hands and face. Afterwards she felt slightly better, being able to breathe through her nose again helped, even if the leeches had seemed to enjoy the warmth of the water, or at least that was what she chose to interpret their movements as.

Feeling more confident she decided to resume her search for the rest of the team. If even half of what Marcus had said was true they were all in far more danger than they knew, especially if Captain Wesker was working for Umbrella. She'd seen enough that she had no doubt that Umbrella had made the monsters they'd been dealing with and if she and her fellow STARS members found out too much during their investigation they'd be in danger

So sitting around waiting to be rescued wasn't an option.

Besides, thanks to what Marcus had done to her, she might at least stand a chance if something attacked her. The leeches had fixed the gunshot wounds and her broken nose, and Marcus had survived being shot, so in a worst case scenario the leeches could probably help with any injuries she received.

As she learned the moment she opened the door to leave, she was in far less danger than she'd anticipated. There was a zombie waiting in the hall outside, but it hardly reacted to her. It made sense in a way, there had been times where she and Billy had encountered zombies and leech men in the same area and there had been no interaction between the two. Her best guess was the leeches emitted some sort of pheromone that prevented the zombies from seeing her as prey. Whatever the reason it was something she could use to her advantage.

Walking past the zombie she began her search.

Occasionally she would find dead zombies and spent shell casings, showing where a fight had taken place and there were times when she would hear gunfire elsewhere in the mansion, but by the time she made it to where she thought the noise was coming from it was all over. All she was doing was running in circles, dodging zombies and chasing echoes while the rest of her team was in danger, a constant reminder of how useless she was.

At least the leeches had started to calm down, they were moving a lot less and were easier to ignore. It was still horrible, but it was something she'd at least be able to live with until she got rid of them.

On her second lap past the one lit fireplace that she'd come across she stopped to pick up a poker, finally doing what she'd told herself she was going to do at the start and grabbing a weapon. Originally she hadn't wanted to risk fighting the zombies, but with the way they ignored her the thought of trying to fight them was a lot less intimidating. Besides, every one she dealt with was one less thing that could hurt the others. That way she wasn't completely useless.

With the first zombie she killed she learned two important things, killing them by caving their skulls in was more effective than shooting them, and that killing something through blunt force trauma wasn't as easy as the movies made it look.

By her fourth zombie she had a pattern, line herself up with the zombie so that she could swing the poker like a baseball bat to hit them across the bridge of the nose, push them to the floor and then hit them the two or three more times it took to keep them down for good. It worked very well against individual zombies, enough so that she decided to try and take out a group of them that had been blocking off one of the halls. She hadn't tried to get by them because she knew that it would mean needing to actually shove past them and that was more than she was ready to try. Now she was armed and had a plan, so it wouldn't be too bad.

After hitting the first zombie and knocking it to the floor the others converged on her before she had a chance to finish it off. It seemed that whatever it was that the leeches did wasn't the perfect defense she had assumed it to be.

She swung wildly, but there wasn't enough space for her to manage the kind of momentum she needed to do any actual damage. Realizing her mistake she tried to back away, only for the zombie she had knocked down to grab her leg and pull her to the floor. She fell backwards, the poker flying from her grip when she hit the floor. The others fell on her as one, biting and clawing at her.

Nails raked across her face, scratched uselessly against her vest, when she brought her arms up to try and protect herself she felt teeth sink into her wrists. Inside her the leeches went wild. She could feel them moving through her body, rushing to every bite and scratch, but they made no attempt to close the injuries, instead pouring out onto the zombies.

She screamed and thrashed, trying to get away, but every time she was able to kick one of them off her another took it place. Slime and leeches were flying in all directions.

Somewhere nearby a door slammed and she screamed even louder, hoping that whoever it was might hear and get to her in time.

One of the zombies tried to bite her throat, its head covered in a writhing mass of leeches. Its teeth scraped at her, but it didn't seem to be able to manage to close its mouth. When she grabbed at its head to try and push it away she could feel bone beneath the slime covering it. The leeches were eating it, biting off muscle and tendons one infinitesimal bit at time. Her efforts at pushing it off of her were rewarded by its lower jaw falling away.

There was shouting very close by.

One of the zombies stood up and then fell.

Someone had arrived to save her and they had a gun.

A second zombie broke away from her, apparently more interested in a meal that wasn't full of slime and parasites. That was good for her. Of the remaining two attacking her the one directly on top of her wasn't able to do much more than claw feebly at her and the other didn't seem to be in much better shape.

Pushing the one off of her she kicked away from the second and managed to reach behind herself to grab the poker, which she somehow knew was there.

It was as covered in slime and leeches as everything else, but she was able to use both hands to hold onto it and hit the zombie until it stopped moving. The leeches had managed to deal with the other zombie, probably by eating their way into its brain and destroying its central nervous system from the inside. Some of them started oozing back to her while others seemed content to eat.

So her question of how the leeches would eat had been answered.

"Holy crap! Are you alright?"

Right, she'd forgotten about her rescuer.

"I'm alright," she laughed with relief when she recognized the man who had rescued her as fellow Bravo Team member, Richard Aiken. If he was alive that meant that she wasn't the only survivor and it was likely a matter of time before they were able to regroup, "You got here just in time. We've got to hurry and tell the others what's going on!"

Richard approached her warily, "Take it easy. I think you might be in shock."

"I'm not…" she trailed off when she looked down at herself. Relief gave way to terror as she saw the amount of damage the zombies had managed to do to her. Her arms were covered in bite marks, a few of them deep enough to have reached bone. There was blood, but not as much as there should have been, leeches and slime packing the injuries, sealing them shut. Beneath the layer of slime the leeches in her injuries were lining up, bringing themselves level with her skin, then as she watched, their bodies began to lighten in color, going from black to gray to almost pink before they vanished entirely. She poked at the area where they'd been and felt their slick bodies moving at the touch. So she'd been wrong that leeches were actively healing her injuries, they were just concealing them. Carefully she ran her finger around the edge of the injury, feeling the distinction between her skin and the camouflaged leeches. There was no pain from any of her injuries, possibly due to anesthetic properties of the leeches' saliva, but that didn't explain why she wasn't suffering from any symptoms of blood loss. Another thing it failed to explain was how she still had full use of her hands. Some of the bites to her arms and hands and been severe enough that they should have damaged nerves and tendons. It didn't make sense from a medical perspective unless there was some sort of regeneration taking place.

"We need to get out of here and get you to some place safe," Richard said as he started gingerly making his way towards her, taking care to step around the zombies as though he was worried that one of them might get up.

She considered warning him about the leeches, worried about what would happen if he stepped on them, but they didn't seem interested in him, and as she watched, she realized that they were actively moving to get out of his way, another behavior that didn't make sense. Leeches, as far as she knew, lacked enough sense of their surroundings to avoid something approaching them.

None of it made sense. There was something obvious she was missing, something that tied it all together.

The leeches remained focused on the zombies and that much at least made sense since most leeches were detritivores and they certainly hadn't been drinking her blood, otherwise she would have been dead. They had eaten the rats that Marcus had made her feed them, but the rats had already been dead. Marcus had said that zombies didn't work as hosts because the leeches ate them…no, overtook them too fast. He'd tried though, because the same virus that made the zombies was carried by the leeches.

"Richard! Don't come any closer!" she scrabbled away from, slipping in the slime and gore.

To his credit he froze, "What? Why?"

"I'm…I might be infected with…something," she looked at the bite marks on her arms, all of which were already nearly completely concealed by the leeches. They didn't hurt at all, just like how the leeches moving through her didn't hurt, just like how the zombies didn't stop attacking until they were dead. Was it because of the leeches or the virus that she couldn't feel pain anymore? Whatever the cause, she didn't want to take any chances.

"What should I do?" Richard started approaching her again, more cautiously this time.

"Stay away from me," she said quickly, struggling to stay calm, "I think it's transferred though bites, but that probably means that all fluids are dangerous."

And she was absolutely covered in blood and slime.

"So we need to get you cleaned up as quickly as possible, otherwise…" he trailed off as the implications of what she'd said sank in.

"No," she shook her head, "I'm not going to end up like those things. At least I shouldn't. I just don't know if I'm contagious or not. We can't take any chances though, so don't come near me."

Mercifully he didn't ask how or why she knew so much, he simply took what she said at face value, probably because he was willing to take it as a given that she knew what she was talking about when it came to science and medicine. He also didn't seem to have noticed the leeches, though that probably shouldn't have been a surprise considering that they were less than an inch long and the ones on her were perfectly camouflaged.

"Alright," Richard took a few steps back as she got up, "So how are we going to get you cleaned up?"

Though she wanted to hurry up and find the others he did have a point, she was more or less a walking contamination hazard in the state she was in.

"I know where there's a washroom," she sighed, looking down at the floor to watch as the leeches left the zombies to return to her. Should she wait for them to get back to her or move on without them? The fact that it was something she was bothering to worry about was frightening, but if they were the only things holding her together then leaving any of them would be like leaving a part of her behind.

In the end she decided that it would be too suspicious if she lingered for too long. Richard was willing to accept that she might be infected without too much trouble, but she had the feeling that his response to discovering that she was literally crawling with parasites wouldn't be good.

"Past few minutes aside you seem to have had better luck than me," Richard said as he followed her, "You at least seem to know what's going on."

Right, she'd been looking for the others so that she could tell them what she'd learned. In the chaos with the zombies she'd forgotten all about it.

"Umbrella isn't just doing drug research and working on biotechnology, they've been dabbling in some pretty shady stuff for years. I don't know what it started out as, but almost from the beginning they've been making biological weapons," she started at the beginning, with the details she was most sure about. That would give her time to figure things out and decide how to tell him the rest of what she knew.

"Like anthrax and stuff like that?" Richard asked, "Why?"

"I don't know why they're doing it, but I wish it was just anthrax," she looked down at her arms, other than pink tinged slime there was no indication that she'd been bitten, "Those zombies we fought are some of it, but I think they're just a byproduct, what happens when a person gets infected with the virus they made. I found some notes and…files and it sounded like they were trying to make living biological weapons. They did a lot of animal experimentation and some of the things they made are way worse than zombies. I don't know much more than that, but I know if we can get back to Captain Wesker he can tell us more."

"Finding Wesker is a great idea," Richard agreed, "But why would he know more about this than the rest of us?"

"Because," Rebecca thought carefully, not wanting to say anything that would make Richard ask questions she didn't want to answer, "Some of the files I found made it clear that he has connections to Umbrella. Besides, when I first joined STARS he implied that he might be able to get me a job with Umbrella."

"Really?" he sounded equal parts skeptical and impressed, "What did the files say? What did Wesker say to you?"

Instead of giving a direct answer to either question she decided to combine the two, "That he was very good friends with one of the researchers there."

Richard laughed, "Is that why you've kept with us for so long? You figured it would be an easy way to get in with Umbrella? Me and the other guys always wondered why you didn't drop out after…"

She was glad he didn't finish that statement. There were several incidents he could have been referring to and none of them were accomplishments she wanted to be reminded of.

They reached the servants' quarters without encountering any zombies and there she made her way to the bathroom. Richard watched her, looking increasingly uncomfortable as she turned on the faucet and let the water in the bathtub run until it was warm.

"Do you think you'll be safe here?" he asked as he stood at the bathroom door.

"I should be," once the water was warm enough she put the stopper in the tub drain and let it start to fill.

"Then I'm going to look for the others while you clean up. You can wait for me here."

"Okay," she wasn't sure if it was because he thought she'd slow him down, if it was because she'd told him she was infected, or if he was genuinely worried about her safety.

He left, closing the door behind him, which she locked for good measure. Then she stripped off her uniform, figuring she would wash it afterwards, and climbed into the tub.

Her intent had been to wash off as quickly as possible and then clean her uniform, but the water felt so good that she decided to take her time. Besides, she had agreed that she would wait for Richard so it wasn't like there was anything else for her to do.

She rubbed at her arms, not sure how to properly clean the injuries there since the leeches had filled them in. Even finding the injuries was difficult, between the leeches beneath her skin and the fact that she could somehow still feel the touch of her fingers against the areas where they had covered, actually finding them was a challenge. The fact that they were somehow transmitting sensory information to her nervous system didn't make sense. She was willing to accept that they could use pheromones to transmit information to each other, but how did they bring her in to the loop? It was obvious that they could, Marcus had been able to get around just fine despite being more leeches than himself, if what he had implied was accurate.

There was something obvious that she was still missing.

Several leeches had left her to swim freely. She could feel their little bodies undulating through the water, except they weren't that little anymore. They'd at least doubled in size since hatching. Where were they getting the mass from? Some of them had eaten the zombies, but even if they'd brought back food for the others it probably wouldn't be enough to fuel that kind of growth.

One of the leeches was exploring, climbing up the edge of the tub. The porcelain was cold.

Somehow she was aware of what the leech felt, proof that it was communicating with the others and they were then sharing it with her.

Curiosity got the better of her.

She scooped several more leeches out of the water and placed them on the edge of the tub. The feeling of cold was more distinct, also the air was dry.

She lifted her hand out of the water and rested it on the rim of the tub. The sensations were the same as what she felt through the leeches.

Taking one of the leeches from the edge of the tub she carefully squeezed it. She could feel pressure, both through her fingers and the leech.

Releasing it she let it fall back into the water. It swam straight to her, not at all frightened by being handled and then dropped

Moving her hand through the water she watched as the leeches followed the motion, tumbling when they got caught in the wake. They swam around her fingers, sliding smoothly against her. More leeches joined in, an undulating black stream following the path of her hand through the water.

It was fascinating to watch and actually rather relaxing, seeing how they moved and feeling the water around them. The behavior didn't make any sense, but that was hardly exceptional considering everything else they could do that they shouldn't have been capable of.

When she stopped her hand the leeches bumped into it, squirming against her and each other in a disorienting mess of sensation. It tickled for lack of a better way of describing it.

As soon as she moved her hand the leeches again followed, bumping and nudging each other, circling in the current. She continued until she finally realized what was happening.

The leeches were playing.

Not only were they intelligent enough to act as a group to protect her, they were responsive to positive stimulus. More than that, because they transmitted sensation to her their play was working to ease the stress she felt. That was why she was able to relax despite the circumstances.

Or maybe she was reading too much into things. She went to turn the tap on to see if they would react to movement from a source other than her. The response was instantaneous. Before she even turned the water on they were gathering beneath the tap, anticipating what was about to happen.

She hesitated, the implications sinking in. Not only were they transmitting information to her, somehow she was transmitting to them as well.

Turning on the water caused them to scatter in all directions, she could feel them trying to swim against the current only to get pushed back. As soon as they were able to they went right back to swimming towards the falling water. There was no doubt about it, they were playing.

After this was all over she was still going to have to find a way to get rid of them, but maybe one that wouldn't kill them. They had helped save her life during the zombie attack and if they were as intelligent as they seemed to be then they would be worth studying. That seemed like a good idea, a way to salvage things for herself after quitting STARS. Besides, there had to be some good that could come from them, a medical use or something.

Leaning back in the bath she watched them, everything that she'd been through was catching up with her and exhaustion was setting in. Maybe if she closed her eyes just for a moment…

She didn't know how long she'd been asleep for. All she knew was that the tub was overflowing and there were leeches everywhere. There was a moment of panic that passed far more quickly than it should have considering the circumstances. That she'd been able to get used to them so fast was frightening, but so far they'd only helped and if they really were intelligent…

The leeches were still swimming around her, playing under the flow of the tap, washing over the sides of the tub and climbing back in to do it all over again. When she turned off the water they circled beneath the tap several times before swimming back to her. She could feel them pressing against her, rejoining the ones that had remained inside her.

She got out of the tub before all of the leeches had rejoined her. There was no way of knowing how long she'd been out for and the last thing she wanted was to be laying around naked in a bath full of leeches when Richard got back. Getting dressed wasn't an option though, at least not until she cleaned the blood and dirt from her uniform.

While she cleaned it as best as she was able, the leeches continued to return to her, lines of them slithering out of the tub and across the floor. If she paid attention she could feel them crawling up her legs, but they were easier to ignore than they had been. Even the itching was barely there. Either she'd gotten used to it or they'd all found where they wanted to stay and stopped moving around so much.

Once her clothing was as clean as it was going to get she spread it out to dry and waited. She'd been out long enough that Richard would probably be back any moment, bringing the others with him. They'd get out of the mansion, she'd quit and then she'd figure things out from there.

Waiting was difficult, but knowing that Richard was out there, getting help made things easier.

During the time she spent pacing the room the last of the leeches returned to her. That was good though, she didn't want them out and visible when Richard came back with help. Explaining them here and now would be too much, because then she'd need to tell them what had happened with director Marcus, yet another embarrassing thing she'd done, one more story about why she wasn't fit to be in STARS.

Looking back even she could see how stupid she'd been to follow him. None of her teammates would have ever gotten themselves into a situation like that. After everything was over though, when all of Umbrella's horrors were brought to light, then she could explain what had happened to her, because then it would be part of a larger picture instead of yet another accident caused by her inexperience. She wouldn't even have to tell anyone about Marcus himself, she could just say that she'd been pushed into a vat of leeches by a zombie. Everyone would believe that and it was honestly less embarrassing than the truth, an accident rather than active effort on her part.

Richard didn't come back.

Enough time had passed that she was starting to get worried.

Maybe he was in trouble.

As little as she liked the idea, she realized that she was going to have to set out on her own again.

At least she'd learned her lesson, only to attack zombies when they were alone and try and avoid them whenever possible.

This time when she started exploring the mansion there were fewer zombies and a lot more open doors. While she'd been asleep there had been a lot going on, but Richard hadn't come for her. She didn't know what that meant, nothing good she was sure.

She wandered the mansion and its outbuildings, seeing signs of people having been through the areas, but never encountering any of them. What she did encounter were the leeches she'd left behind with the zombies. They'd spread out and explored on their own and they'd smelled people, even seen the shadows and motion of their passing. She still had no idea how they were able to communicate the information to each other and pass it on to her, but she was thankful for it. Once everything was over she'd have the time to figure it out, but until then she was glad for any help she could get.

Following whatever it was the leeches could smell she went deeper into the mansion, discovering that, very much like what she had found at the training facility, there was much more going on than there seemed. There were hidden rooms, secret passages and countless additions to the building that made no sense. Her first thought was to dismiss it as the whim of an eccentric millionaire, but she soon realized there was something far more ominous going on. The reach of Umbrella was greater than she had thought. Many of the additions had decidedly modern electronic locking mechanisms, and on occasion she found memos with the Umbrella logo on them.

Research had been conducted in the mansion and the lack of leeches other than her own indicated that the outbreak here was unconnected to what she'd experienced earlier. Two separate containment breeches in such a short period of time wasn't something she was willing to attribute to random chance. There was something much bigger going on than she'd first suspected and Captain Wesker was in the middle of it, something she was growing increasingly sure of. His name had shown up too many times for it to be coincidence which meant the real question was, why had Bravo Team been sent in with so little information? It went past carelessness and straight into the realm of malice, especially if Marcus had been telling the truth about Captain Wesker attempting to kill him.

Where did that put her and the others? What was the point of it all?

Again and again she was missing the bigger picture.

Hearing an animal growl down what was otherwise a promising stretch of hall she retreated to backtrack and hopefully find an alternate route. She knew she could deal with zombies, but she wasn't sure what else might be in the mansion and there had been plenty of things that she and Billy had encountered that she didn't want to even think about facing alone. The leeches, impossibly capable as they were, probably wouldn't be enough to protect and she didn't want to test them. It was far better to play it safe, not because she was a coward, but because she was becoming increasingly aware of her own limitations.

Passing a window movement outside caught her attention. Someone was running around out there, too fast to be a zombie, but by the time she called out to them they were already gone.

She continued exploring, following halls and corridors, up and down the mansion until she was hopelessly lost. Maybe, if she wanted to, the leeches would help her retrace her steps, but that wasn't what she needed to do. She had to find Richard or whoever it was that she'd seen and…she wasn't sure what other than that she'd figure it out when she found them.

The more she searched the less sense the layout of the mansion made. Floors and flights of stairs didn't line up. A chance wrong turn after a hall dead-ended brought her to a new part of the building. Not just an area that she hadn't explored, but a series of rooms that looked like they'd been added years after the original construction of the place. Labs and conference rooms with state of the art equipment, a hidden Umbrella research facility miles away from the city.

Somehow the leeches knew that the scent trail here was fresher than anywhere else. She was going in the right direction, but what was she heading into?

Hearing footsteps in the distance she broke into a run.

Whoever it was, they were heading away from her faster than she was able to keep up. Did she take the chance and call out? What choice did she have?

"Please! Wait!"

The footsteps stopped, then, "Jill? How did you get here?"

"No, I'm Rebecca!" she called back, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

She'd done it! Though she had no clue who it was she'd found she knew that they had to be in STARS because there was only one person they could be talking about, Jill Valentine, the only other woman in STARS, to whom she'd been constantly compared and found lacking. She didn't even care that they'd probably be disappointed to find out it was her.

"Rebecca Chambers? From Bravo Team?" they called back to her. By the sound of it they were heading towards her.

"Yes," she turned a corner and saw that she was right, whoever it was she had found was in a STARS uniform. Squinting she tried to figure out exactly who they were. His face was familiar, but she couldn't place a name to it. Someone from Alpha Team obviously, but because she was still so new and hadn't had much interaction with anyone outside of Bravo Team she wasn't too sure who he was, "You have no idea how glad I am that I found you!"

He smiled at her, "Where are the others?"

"I…I don't know," she stammered, "We got separated early on. There were monsters and…"

She trailed off, realizing that now that she was saying it out loud it sounded really bad. Not just that she didn't know where any of the others were, but that she'd been on her own for so long and that monsters featured prominently in her story, no matter how she tried to tell it. Of course whoever it was that she'd found had to have encountered monsters as well, they couldn't have gotten this far without doing so.

"I know," he nodded grimly, "I'm Chris Redfield from Alpha Team. We got sent in to look for you and got attacked as well, probably by the same things. It was bad, but Jill, Barry, Wesker and myself managed to make it here. Then we got separated, so I guess the two of us are in the same situation."

"Yeah," she looked down at the floor, embarrassed that Chris was willing to compare their situations. One thing he said bothered her, "Captain Wesker is here?"

"Somewhere," Chris shook his head, "I met up with him once after we got separated and haven't seen him since."

"This isn't good," she didn't know what it meant, but she was certain that Wesker's being there was significant. He'd brought Alpha Team to the mansion on purpose and then abandoned them. Yes, he was the leader of the team, but he wouldn't have left them without reason. No, she was looking at it the wrong way, he wasn't there because he was with the team, the team had ended up there because he'd wanted to go to the mansion, "Why would the Captain bring you here?"

"To get away from the things attacking us," Chris replied, "Now follow me. I think there's something down here and it's important. Some computer files I found mentioned something called the Tyrant project and –"

"Wesker's here to take it!" she cut him off, "Director Marcus said that Wesker had him killed so he could take over the research. When the virus got out something must have happened and now Wesker is trying to cover things up or –"

"Wait," this time Chris cut her off, "What, who and what?"

"Director Marcus managed to modify the virus Umbrella was working with, he actually got it to work close to the way they wanted it to except Wesker killed him so he and his friend could take over the project," she started, realizing that things were finally starting to fall into place. She still didn't know why she'd been brought into STARS, but she knew why she'd been part of the team that had been sent out, why they'd been given so little information, the purpose was for them to fail, to be a distraction while Wesker did whatever it was that he was trying to do, "They must have made progress until something went wrong. The virus got out, well director Marcus let out the monsters, but there must have been an accident too and Wesker sent us in to deal with the consequences."

"Slow down," Chris put his hands on her shoulders, "Take a deep breath and tell me one thing at a time. Who is Marcus?"

"One of the founding members of Umbrella," she said quickly, not sure what that had to do with anything, "I found files about his work in the old training facility, diary entries too. He was working with something he called the Progenitor virus. He managed to modify it into a new virus, the Tyrant virus which they ended up using for something called the Tyrant project. I don't know what Umbrella's goal was other than making weapons, but they thought his research with the leeches was a dead end or something. Except it wasn't. They saved his life after Wesker shot him."

"Alright, Marcus was the one who made the monsters and let them out," Chris took a deep breath, "That at least explains where they came from and then the Captain found him and dealt with him. So things are more or less wrapped up."

"No," Rebecca pulled away, frustrated at how badly Chris was misunderstanding the events that had happened, "This is something new. I don't know what it is, but Wesker does, that's why we need to find him."

"I thought you said that you saw Wesker shoot Marcus," he said, looking at her incredulously, "Why didn't you ask him then?"

"That was ten years ago!" she stomped her foot in frustration, not caring that she must have looked like a little girl throwing a tantrum, "I didn't even know Wesker was here until I met up with you! He's here because of the Tyrant project and because he's working for Umbrella."

"Slow down again," Chris' expression grew concerned, "What happened ten years ago? That's how long Wesker was working with Umbrella?"

"No, he was working for them before that," she frowned, wishing that Chris would actually pay attention to what she was saying, "What happened ten years ago was him killing director Marcus."

"And how did you find out about this?" he asked, clearly troubled by the implications of what she was telling him, "Wesker's name came up in some of the files I found here, but they were all recent. You're trying to tell me that he's been with them for years, before STARS even. If that's the case…"

"Marcus told me," she blurted out before she could stop herself. There was no turning back now, she had to tell him the whole truth, "I ran into him in the training facility."

"I thought you said Wesker killed him," Chris looked at her suspiciously.

"No, Wesker shot him, but the leeches saved him," she said, only to realize how crazy it all sounded, "Don't worry, I can prove it."

She scratched at her wrists trying to pull one of the leeches free from where they were covering her injuries.

"Stop that," Chris grabbed her arms, "You're going to hurt yourself."

"No I'm not," she tried to break free from his grip, but he was too strong. All she could do was focus on the leeches squirming over her arms, hoping that they would understand that Chris wasn't a threat and wouldn't attack him, "I just want to show you one of the leeches."

"There aren't any leeches," Chris said quietly, "Just calm down. Whatever happened at the training facility is over and done with. Relax and sit down. I'm going to see what's down here and then we can go. If the Captain really is working for Umbrella there should be proof down here. All you need to do is wait for me to get back."

"You think I'm crazy," she accused, fighting back tears. It was just like with Billy and Billy had seen the leeches at the training facility, so he'd at least known that they were real.

"No," Chris said gently, still refusing to let go, "I think you've been through a lot and you need time to calm down. None of us could have anticipated any of this and you honestly shouldn't have been sent out in the first place. I get it that you blame Wesker for what happened to your team and I'm ready to believe that he's working for Umbrella. For now you just need to relax and we can sort everything else out later."

Then he let go of her wrists.

There was no sense in trying to argue with him or try and prove that she wasn't crazy. Luck alone had prevented the leeches from biting him and she wasn't about to tempt fate again in case he grabbed her again.

"Fine, after this is over I'll prove I'm not crazy, but for now I'm sticking with you. I have as much a right to know what's going on as anyone."

He seemed willing to accept that and let her follow him to the elevator without comment. They rode down to yet another basement floor, arriving at an airlock style door. Several pipes had burst, filling the hall with a fine mist, obscuring the warning signs covering the walls. It took several seconds for the locking mechanism of the door to disengage and when it opened they were greeted by a baffling sight, rows and rows of computer monitors and several enormous tubes that spanned from the floor to the ceiling. They were made of clear glass, but the liquid inside them was thick and cloudy, obscuring whatever shadowy things were floating in them.

Past all that was a man frantically typing away at a computer terminal. Silhouetted by the light from the monitor it was impossible for her to tell who it was until they were closer. She had been right.

"Wesker," Chris' voice was neutral, though Rebecca could sense an undertone of distrust.

"So you've come," Wesker didn't even look up from what he was doing, "Chris, you make me proud. Of course you are one of my men."

Chris let out a dismissive snort, "Thanks."

Rebecca was about to cut in, tell Wesker that she knew the truth, but before she could speak he turned around and pointed his gun at her.

She gasped, Chris froze. Of all the things she had imagined happening this wasn't one of them.

"Since when Wesker?" Chris demanded.

Wesker let his aim drift over to Chris, likely having decided that she was unarmed and not threat at all, "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"Since when have they been slipping you a paycheck?"

Rebecca was amazed, he seemed less concerned about the gun aimed at him than Wesker's betrayal. At least it meant that he believed her about Wesker working for Umbrella.

"I think you're a bit confused," Wesker stepped in closer, leaving Chris with no space to react. Though it was impossible to see the Captain's eyes through his sunglasses Rebecca got the distinct impression that he was looking past Chris to her as he continued, "I've always been with Umbrella. STARS were Umbrella's, no, rather my, little piggies. The Tyrant virus leaked, polluting this whole place and unfortunately I had to give up my lovely members of STARS."

"You killed them with your own dirty hands," Chris raised an accusing finger, "You son of a bitch!"

"No," Rebecca felt no pleasure at learning that she had been completely right, only a growing sense of horror, and paradoxically, relief. She was honestly relieved that things had gone the way they had. If the Tyrant virus hadn't been released she would have continued working for STARS and Wesker might have made good on his promise to get her a job with Umbrella. Who knew what sort of project she might have been assigned to and how long it would have taken her to figure out what was going on? It was possible that it might have taken her years to learn the truth, that rather than helping people with the research she was doing, she was helping make monsters. And what would have happened when she learned the truth? Would fear and guilt keep her silent or would Wesker kill her just like he had director Marcus, just like the members of Bravo and Alpha Team, like he was about to do with Chris?

"Oh yes dear," Wesker's expression was unreadable, "Just like this."

Without warning he turned away from Chris and for the third time since her ordeal had started, she was shot.

The impact knocked her to the floor. There was no pain, just pressure and the inability to breathe. Had her Kevlar vest protected her?

No, no it hadn't.

It was a strange thing, to feel herself bleeding internally. He'd shot her high in the chest, just off center. There were a lot of things he could have hit there, very important things. A lung, one of the major blood vessels leading to her heart, her heart itself.

Wesker was still talking, but his voice was distant. She tried to watch him, to see what he would do next, but it was hard to see anything. Her vision was starting to blur.

The leeches were frantically swarming to her chest, stopping the bleeding, but that wouldn't be enough. The blood that was already there, whatever was damaged had to be dealt with as well. If her lungs couldn't expand, if blood wasn't making it from her heart to the rest of her body…

There was only so much that they could do.

They still tried though, she could feel more and more of them filling her chest, frantically trying to seal the damage and clean up.

Something was happening around her, a lot of commotion and movement, but she hardly noticed it, all her attention was on the leeches and struggling to breathe. Through it all there was no pain, just pressure and the horrible sliding feeling of the leeches.

Any moment now she would pass out from blood loss or lack of oxygen and that would be the end. Even if Chris made it to her before she bled out there wouldn't be time to get her to anyone who could help. She was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Not even the leeches. As good as they had done hiding the bites on her arms there was no way they could repair a damaged organ in a way it could function.

She rubbed at her wrists, unable to find a pulse through the leeches. It didn't matter, she could feel the leeches moving, but not her heart beating. The movement of the leeches was all there was. She couldn't even breathe anymore.

"Rebecca!"

Someone was picking lifting her, propping her up. The leeches shifted inside her.

"Chris," she gasped, amazed that she was able to speak. Maybe the way he'd lifted her had caused the leeches to shift enough to let her lungs work again. She could still feel the leeches sitting heavily in her chest. Somehow they must have stopped the internal bleeding and then managed to get rid of the blood pressing on her organs by drinking it. She could tell because they were sharing the meal with the others. Breathing, now that she could manage it, was uncomfortable, but it was possible, the leeches moving to let her lungs expand. Her chest was packed with them. They didn't repair or heal wounds, they just filled them.

"Good thing you were wearing your bulletproof vest," he said, smiling at her. Before she could attempt to correct him, that Wesker had taken care to shoot above it, he continued, "There's nothing left for us to do here. Let's get moving."

She looked past him and saw Wesker laying prone on the floor. A distance away was something enormous and horrifically malformed. Whatever it was that had happened she didn't want to know the details, "Okay."

All that mattered was that Wesker was dead and it was over. STARS was over, no need to worry about telling anyone she was quitting.

If Chris noticed her fleeting smile he didn't comment, he just helped her to her feet and guided her out of the room.

She wasn't paying attention to where they were going or anything else, all she could focus on was the weight in her chest. It was hard to breathe. All she could feel was the leeches squirming, moving back and forth, sharing the meal they'd had. They'd drank her blood, to save her, but still, what if they developed a taste for it?

Keeping her breaths short and shallow helped ease the discomfort. The leeches didn't like being compressed when her diaphragm expanded to pull air into her lungs. It was their being compressed that was uncomfortable, not the act of breathing itself. Why should she care about their comfort? All they'd done was save her life.

Chris brought her to the elevator and told her to wait, that he had to take care of one more thing.

She nodded, listening as the sound of his footsteps vanished into the distance. Then she listened to the gurgling sounds of her own breathing and the faint sliding sensation in her chest as the leeches moved. She couldn't feel her heart beating, but she had lost a lot of blood. Maybe she was going into shock.

She tried to check her pulse but like before there were too many leeches on her arms, all she could feel was their moving. They squirmed excitedly beneath her fingers, twitching like they were trying to mimic a pulse.

Her neck then, no leeches there.

Nothing.

She licked her lips, realizing that she could taste blood, her own blood. One of her lungs must have been damaged then. A lung and who knew what else.

She coughed.

Some blood and a fat leech came up and landed on the floor next to her. It was big having gorged itself on blood, almost the size of her thumb. When it reared up she could see its mouth and hooked teeth.

She picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand. Proof that she wasn't crazy, if she wanted to show it to anyone.

Did she want to?

She wasn't sure.

Just in case she put the leech into one of her pockets. It pulled at the fabric with its teeth, curious about its surroundings. It could smell the others, sense them, but it was apart from them. Cautious but unafraid. The leech was better off than her then.

Footsteps, this time two sets. She looked up.

Chris was back and there was a woman with him, the unmistakable Jill Valentine.

Jill looked at her, eyes asking an unspoken question and Rebecca looked away.

She couldn't feel her heart beating, just leeches.

They were infected with the T-virus.

The T-virus had made the zombies.

The leeches couldn't be introduced to an infected host, they overtook it too fast. They ate it too fast.

An uninfected host wouldn't stay that way for long though, would it? Not with the leeches carrying the virus. Once it died they'd start eating, but maybe in those few hours before death they'd have time to finish imprinting on the host. They could pick up on chemical signals in the host's blood, maybe even electrical signals in the brain. It would allow them to know things that they shouldn't, anticipate what the host was about to do.

She followed Chris and Jill down the hall to a different elevator, glancing at them out of the corner of her eye from time to time.

She'd seen the zombies mauling dead bodies. They'd attacked her and tried to eat her even while the leeches ate them. That she felt no desire to attack her rescuers meant nothing, she wasn't really a zombie, was she? Her leeches had killed the zombie attacking her by destroying its central nervous system. The leeches were detritivores after all, they preferred eating dead things. There was no reason that they'd be hungry. They already had something dead to eat.

Carefully she ran her fingers along her arm, searching for where the leeches had filled in the bites. It was hard to find the edges of the injuries, not just because the skin around it was starting to grow numb, but because the wounds were larger than they'd been.

This elevator took them to the surface.

It was day, the sun was bright. It dried out the slime coating the leeches on her arms, leaving it a sticky film. They wanted to burrow away from it and hide, but she endured the discomfort, working out a compromise of sorts.

She stopped trying to breathe.

It was over and she was safe.

"I quit."

But Chris and Jill didn't hear. Her words had been too quiet and they were focused on the helicopter circling overhead.

She was safe, but she hadn't really made it through her ordeal, had she?

The leeches squirmed. They wanted to get away from the light.

Looking at her arms, she could see them twitching slightly as they rolled over, allowing new leeches to take their place. They were good at working together, very good. Enough so that she hadn't realized the extent of their cooperation. They'd tricked her into thinking that she was fine.

A signal flare went off, the helicopter circled lower.

She stepped back into the shade to wait.

Taking the leech out of her pocket she put it on her arm.

There was no pain when it bit her and started to burrow, its color changing to match that of her skin. Everything she felt was what the leech felt because…

Pulling the leech away before it finished she looked at the divot it had left in her arm.

The helicopter landed and she put the leech back, watching as it vanished. She ran her finger along were the leech was. Where the leech was she could feel the contact, around it was numb. The same went for her wrists, everywhere there were leeches she could feel things normally. Where they weren't there was nothing.

Chris offered her a hand getting onto the helicopter, but she ignored him, struggling to climb in on her own. Jill flowed afterwards, sitting down next to Chris.

Rebecca collapsed on the floor.

She was crying, or sobbing at least. She wasn't sure if there were any actual tears. Chris and Jill probably thought it was because she was weak or crazy, or it was survivor's guilt because the rest of her team was dead. If they thought it was the last reason they were mostly right.

Her entire team was dead, herself included. She'd died in the bathtub, waiting for help that never came.

All that was left were the leeches, slowly eating away at what was left.


	3. Home at Last

**Notes:** Here's the start of actual, new, content. I hope you enjoy. I'll be trying to update this regularly, hopefully once a week, but I can't promise that I'll be able to stick to that.

o0o

When the helicopter landed Chris was the first to stand. Helping Jill to her feet he addressed the survivors and her, because he didn't know that she was dead. Not getting up from the floor, Rebecca listened as he talked about how they had to report what had happened, reveal what Umbrella was up to. Jill nodded her head, agreeing with what he was saying, but looking too tired to add anything of her own.

"You can do that," the third Alpha Team member, Barry, shook his head, "I'm going home. I need to be with Kathy and the girls now."

"You-" Chris began, but Jill interrupted.

"It's okay," Jill said softly, putting a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, "Take care of them and then deal with everything else."

Barry nodded in silent thanks, Chris shrugged. Then Jill turned her attention to her. Rebecca stared up at her, wondering if she actually expected her to do something. How could she thought?

The sun was too bright for the leeches. She could feel them squirming on her arms, under her skin, trying to get away from it while still maintaining the illusion that she was fine. Except she wasn't and their mimicry was starting to fail. The edges of her injuries were visible now, little flecks of blood along the ragged lines that marked where she ended and the leeches began. Everywhere they were hurt, while everything else was completely numb. Pressing her arms against her chest, as though she could hide what had happened, she rolled over so that her back was to Jill.

The ones inside her, in her chest, had mostly finished cleaning things up, clearing things out? She shuddered and tried to take a breath, just to test. It was possible, but it wasn't easy, the leeches working together to help her pull in the air.

"I can't," she said, surprising herself with how normal her voice sounded. She wasn't sure what she'd expected, a moan? A growl? The wet sliding of leeches moving against each other? Hearing her own voice, the same as ever was a shock.

"Why not?" Jill sounded confused, "What's wrong? Were you injured?"

She could hear all three of them backing away now, because they knew what her being injured meant, that she was infected with the Tyrant virus, that she might turn into a zombie attack them at any moment.

But she wouldn't, because she was still in control, or maybe the leeches were. She certainly didn't feel in control of anything right now.

"Were you?" Chris' voice grew hard.

She tried taking another breath. It was easier this time, the leeches were getting the hang of things, "No, I…I wasn't injured, I just…"

Because they didn't know she was dead, that everything she'd done from the start was wrong, that her whole team was dead because of her, that she'd let an escaped convict, a murderer get away because she was too frightened to even try and stop him, she'd followed a madman without question and in the end, instead of even trying to help, she'd hidden away and died. Afterwards she'd tried to help, but that didn't really count, especially not when, in the end, she stood there and let Captain Wesker shoot her without even trying.

Before she could stop herself she was sobbing again. People were dead because of badly she'd screwed up, she was dead because of it. Joining STARS was supposed to have just been an ordinary job in a small, not too crazy city where the pharmaceutical giant Umbrella had a research center. If things hadn't gone wrong it would have been a way for her to build a résumé and get a job at Umbrella. They were so picky about who they hired, so specific about the kinds of people they wanted, and now that it was too late for it to matter, she knew why.

She didn't feel Barry's hand on her shoulder until he was rolling her over, trying to help her to her feet.

Agitated by the light, the leeches writhed.

"No!" Rebecca tried to pull away from him, "Let go! The leeches might…"

Backing away from Barry before they could attack him, she looked helplessly back and forth between him and the others. They'd been worried that she might turn into a zombie, what would happen if they found out about the leeches? Despite being members of the same organization, she realized that she didn't know any of the members of Alpha Team well enough to be sure.

Jill looked like she was about to ask a question, but Chris silenced her with a small shake of his head.

"Maybe you should just go home," Chris suggested, "Rest and take some time to get things straight before you make a report."

Again Jill looked like she wanted to say something, but held her tongue because of the way Chris was looking at her.

Rebecca knew what it was about, Chris thought she was crazy, and, looking back she realized that her explanation of things hadn't been the most coherent. If she was going to have anyone believe her she was going to have to think of a better way of explaining what she'd been through, one that left out the leeches and director Marcus and Billy and pretty much everything that had happened. Chris and Jill would back her up on the zombies, she was sure of that, but everything else?

"Do you have a car?" Jill asked, apparently agreeing with Chris' suggestion that she go home.

Rebecca shook her head, "I take the bus."

And in the state she was in that wouldn't be an option. She didn't even know where the nearest bus stop was and if she had it wasn't like she'd be able to make it there, not with how bright the sun was. There was no telling what would happen to the leeches. Their mimicry wouldn't hold up, that much she was sure of. On her arms the line between leech and her was clear, if only because she knew what she was looking for, a patchwork of normal looking skin and pale, mottled areas, broken by reddish lines where blood mixed with the leeches' slime. At the border between her and the leeches she caught sight of the occasional line of black, marking when one leech moved to get out of the sun and another took its place. All of them wanted to get away from the light at once, but at the same time they were struggling to maintain their mimicry.

If she tried to walk to the bus it would fail. They'd be moving too much, too agitated to properly blend it and if she tried to ignore it and keep going, what would happen then? Would they turn on her, eat everything that was left and then slither off to find a new victim? The last thing she wanted was for anyone to be hurt because of her.

The sun hurt them, maybe it hurt them badly enough to kill them, and then what would happen to her? She was dead but somehow still up and walking around, so if the leeches died she might just drop dead herself. Except she might be infected with the Tyrant virus, if not from the leeches, from the zombies that had attacked her. So without the leeches she might end up a zombie and then she'd hurt people for sure.

What was she supposed to do?

She watched the leeches twitch. They weren't even eating now because of how agitated they were.

The normal looking skin was where they were, everywhere else was pale.

She was dead.

Realizing that she'd been staring blankly at her arms for who knew how long she looked up at the others, "I don't know what to do."

Chris and Jill exchanged a look, one that made Rebecca cringe. She'd become a problem, one they had to deal with before they could do anything important. It wouldn't have bothered her if not for everything else. As the rookie on Bravo Team she was used to being dead weight, useless in most situations and a burden until her far too specialized knowledge became useful. Now she wasn't just useless, she might be dangerous and it was no one's fault but her own.

"I'll give you a ride home," Barry offered.

Refusing would only make things worse, so she nodded and meekly followed Barry to where his car was parked.

He opened the door for her, got in and waited for her to buckle her seatbelt before starting down the road away from the airport. She appreciated that he didn't even try to talk to her until they reached the end of the road leading from the airport to the highway and then it was only to ask her for directions to get her home. She told him where she lived and they spent the rest of the ride in silence. Barry was lost in his own thoughts, whatever they might have been and she slumped down in her seat, trying to keep out of the sun as best as she could.

Arriving at her apartment he parked the car, got out and opened the door for her, then walked her to the door of the building.

As she fumbled with her keys Barry cleared his throat.

She ignored him, knowing that whatever he was about to say wasn't going to help, not when it took all of her effort not to drop the keys. The leeches hadn't made it down to her fingers yet, leaving her unable to feel what she was doing and the slime coating them had dried to a clinging, itching film that she couldn't wait to wash off. Add all to that to the fact that she was thirstier than she'd been in her entire life, which at least made sense since she hadn't drank anything in a day or more. Hunger would probably come later, when she wasn't dehydrated and that was what had her worried. What would happen when she got hungry?

"If you need anything, or even just need to talk, give me a call. I'm not going to be going back to work after…" he was silent for a long while, making Rebecca think that was the end of it, but eventually he continued, unaware that the reason she hadn't opened the door wasn't because she was waiting for him, but because she still couldn't get the key to turn, "I don't know what you went through, but if it was anything like…"

The key finally turned and she nearly fell into her apartment. When her keys fell to the ground she didn't even bother trying to pick them up, she just kicked them into the front hall. Later, when she could, she'd pick them up.

Barry was still standing there, looking as lost and helpless as she felt. He'd been through the impossible, and she wanted to feel bad for him, did feel bad for him, but at least he'd made it. He was still alive, there was a chance for him to recover, move past whatever he'd been through. She didn't know how much more time she had, what would happen when the leeches were done.

Director Marcus had said that she was supposed to end up like him, but he'd also said that all his previous attempts at replicating what the leeches had done with him had been failures. How soon would it be before she knew?

Which would be worse?

Barry was still standing there.

"Thanks for the ride," she offered, hoping that it would be enough. There wasn't really anything else she could say. If she needed help it wasn't going to be any sort that he could give. Unless she had some warning that things were going to go bad for her, that she was going to end up a monster. Then maybe she could call him to come and finish her off before she hurt anyone.

"Here," he handed her a folded piece of paper.

If he noticed how cold her fingers were when she took it he didn't say anything.

Each of them having said their part, done what was necessary, Barry left.

Rebecca waited until his car was out of sight before closing the door. Ignoring the keys on the floor she looked at the paper Barry had left her. His phone number, written in crayon. The piece of paper was a receipt from a fast-food restaurant. Two kids meals. Right, he had a family, Kathy and the girls.

If the leeches started taking over she wouldn't call him after all.

Locking the front door behind her she staggered into the kitchen, got herself a glass of water and drank it in one gulp. Still thirsty, she had another and then another. Halfway through the fourth she found herself unable to swallow.

She coughed.

A leech slid into the glass in a cloud of brownish fluid.

It seemed as surprised as she was, climbing up and clinging to the rim to try and reach for her.

Terrified, she dropped the glass.

The fall didn't hurt the leech, it was hardly bothered by what had happened, more confused than anything.

Her stomach churned as she fought back nausea. Inside her she could feel the leeches moving, shifting in her chest and abdominal cavity. They were agitated, not at all happy with the cold water she'd just drank and left them swimming in.

She coughed again.

They were trying to get away from the cold.

Knowing what was about to happen she bent over the sink and closed her eyes.

She could feel them crawling up, making her cough to help push them along faster than they could have managed on their own.

In the warm air they relaxed, the dishes in the sink were something interesting for them to explore.

When it was over she didn't look down into the sink. There was nothing in the world that could make her do that.

Her ordeal wasn't over yet, despite how much she had drank she was still desperately thirsty.

Swallowing hard she went to the cabinet for another glass and this time she let the water get warm first. She knew when it was good because the leeches in the sink started investigating it, letting the falling water slide them across the dishes. Staring fixedly at the wall as she felt several leeches emerged to investigate, strings of slime clinging to them.

They reared up, mouths open, drinking. Some of them reached too far into the stream of water and were knocked off her arm and into the sink below, landing amidst the dirty dishes that she'd left there two days ago, joining the swarm that was already there. Had it really been two days ago that everything had gone wrong?

It felt like longer.

The leeches swam in the dirty water, investigating the remains of her last meal clinging to the plates and pans.

She could feel as the leaches that were drinking grew fat and then dragged their bloated bodies back to the others and rejoined them, disgorging the water that they'd drank to melt away the slime.

The sense of relief was immediate.

Of course, she wasn't thirsty, the leeches were.

Turning off the kitchen sink she went to the bathroom, rust tinted water dripping form her arm as the leeches cleaned the dried blood and slime off of each other.

She stripped out of her blood and slime covered uniform, leaving it in a heap in the corner as the tub filled.

Once the water was the right temperature she dipped her arms in, watching as the leeches rippled and flowed, abandoning their mimicry in their excitement and relief, leaving her arms covered in undulating greenish-black patches.

A number of them broke free to let themselves be tumbled around by the water, just like they had back at the mansion. She could feel their movements, the dizzying feeling of falling end over end, the exhilaration that came with it. Twice now she was experiencing proof that they were playful, she could feel it through whatever connection they shared with her, with each other.

Except was it the leeches that enjoyed it or was it her? How much could they actually experience and how much of it was in response to signals sent by her?

She'd gotten thirsty because they needed water, she wasn't hungry because they still had plenty to eat, so that implied that they were running things. But if they were playful because she enjoyed the sensation and they were acting in response to her, that meant that she had some degree of control. The difference was important, possibly the most important aspect of her situation.

Climbing into the tub she let the water wash over her. The leeches swam around the tub, exploring, relaxing. Being in the water made her feel better because it made the leeches feel better. The pain from earlier was fading, but the numbness remained. She could only feel the water because of the leeches, she couldn't feel herself laying in the tub, but she could feel leeches clinging to the sides and bottom.

When the water was deep enough she turned it off. The last thing she needed was to pass out or fall asleep and flood the place. The other tenants would come to complain or get the building's manager and then they'd find the leeches. She couldn't let that happen, not when she didn't know what the leeches would do, when she still hadn't figured out if she was still in control. She'd need to come up with a test, one she could perform safely and in the apartment. It was something for her to worry about later though, right now she was tired. The last time she'd slept had been when she'd died and she'd been through a lot since then.

Laying back, she submerged her head, a strange sensation since she couldn't actually feel the water over her face. It made what she did next easier.

Opening her mouth she inhaled, the leeches inside her responding to the idea without hesitation. Her lungs flooded with water, but there was no pain, just a sensation of relaxation as the leeches found themselves floating.

How easy it had been should have frightened her, but with so much else to worry about she'd run out of fear to waste on little things like that.

While she lay there the leeches swam and explored and ate.

She could tell because the numbness was fading. Feeling was returning to her hands and everywhere else the leeches were latching onto.

Tired, but unable to truly fall asleep she found herself in a dream-like state, focused on the sensation of countless small, undulation forms floating in the water, moving together in slow, lazy circles. Rising and sinking as they took turns eating and investigating their surroundings. She was aware of it all, albeit in a strange, diffuse state. Reaching out in all directions she could feel up the wall, over the edge of the tub and onto the tile floor. Her uniform stank of blood and dirt and her own death. Where the sink met the wall there was a gap, a sliver of darkness and new smells to investigate, safely out of the light. The shower curtain swung gently from the weight of all the leeches climbing up it.

The day drew to a close, night fell and in the darkness leeches explored.

And ate.


	4. Acclimation

**Notes:** Sorry it took me so long to get this up and sorry if I haven't responded personally to your reviews. It's been a busy week for me and I fell off my schedule super hard. On the upside of things I've got CrystalFlame360 betaing this for me now so hopefully that'll take care of my issues with grammar and spelling. As always thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy.

o0o

The leeches grew quickly, eating and replacing what they ate.

In the end, it was hunger that forced her out of the bathtub. It was the first thing that she was really aware of since laying down to rest. Everything else had been a gentle, drifting, floating dreamlike state. Thoughts, when they came were indistinct and impossible to hold onto. It was better that way, she didn't have to think about what happened. The leeches swam and schooled and explored and she was dimly aware of it all. The strongest emotion they felt, if it could even be considered emotion, was mild interest in their surroundings. No hope, no dread, no anticipation. They were safe and fearless.

But in time, they grew hungry.

She could feel the leeches gathering together, her thoughts growing more focused as they did so, until she was able to sit up in the bath. It was dark. She hadn't turned on any lights when she'd gotten home, and it was night now. There was just enough light coming in through the windows that she was able to see. The water she was in was dark, from all the leeches still swimming in it. There were enough of them and they were big enough, now that they all couldn't be inside her at once.

The largest of the ones she could see crawling up the walls, were nearly two inches long when they stretched to their full length. They were fast growers, remarkably so to have gotten that big in just a few hours.

Carefully, she stood up and was caught off guard by how she felt.

Perfectly fine.

The numbness and stiffness from earlier was gone. When she reached for her towel, her fingers closed effortlessly around it, pulling it from the hook it was hanging on with no difficulty at all. She could feel it, soft and dry.

She could feel again, everywhere she touched there was sensation, yet she couldn't feel the leeches inside of her at all. There was no pretending that it had all been a dream though. She could see the leeches crawling on the walls, feel the ones swimming in the water. Being aware of contact with something that she wasn't physically touching was strange, dreamlike, but it was all real. She knew that the leeches had to be there, she'd felt them squirming into place as they gathered together and woken her up, but she couldn't feel them. It was a relief, but at the same time it was unnerving. With everything else she could feel, why not them?

Wrapping the towel around her, savoring the way she could feel its weight on her body, she opened the bathtub drain. The leeches were large enough that there was no fear of them going down the drain, and they were strong enough to cling to the sides of the tub to avoid being caught in the flowing water, except for the ones that deliberately let go to let themselves be pulled in circles.

That was the one thing that made them less frightening than they would have been otherwise, that, either for her benefit, or their own, they were able to act in a manner that served no purpose, other than to have fun. Yes, they'd acted to save her life, worked together to protect her, responded to her, but the fact that they could enjoy things and seek enjoyment, meant that they were less alien, possessing qualities that were actually relatable. Everything else could be attributed to instinct of one sort or another, but the ability to have fun couldn't be explained by anything other than their possessing some degree of intelligence. The question was, how much?

No, she supposed, the real question was how much of her was there left?

She'd died. There was no pretending anything different. She'd been shot, nearly drowned, mauled by zombies, shot again, through the heart that time, stopped breathing and then lay submerged in a bathtub for hours. There was no way she'd recovered from all that, from any of that.

Yet, she checked her pulse anyway.

Nothing.

There was no sense in dwelling on it, not when the leeches were hungry. They'd eaten so much already, and she didn't want to find out what would happen if they got hungry enough to finish off what was left of her.

There had to be something left of her, otherwise, she wouldn't be standing in the bathroom worrying about what would happen to her. She could think and feel, so at the very least her brain and nervous system had to be fine. From there, it was easy enough to extrapolate that her major organ systems had to be okay as well, infected with the Tyrant virus and integrated into the leeches somehow, but otherwise fine.

It was a horrifying thought, and it didn't feel completely right. The zombies she had encountered were, according to Director Marcus, also infected with the Tyrant virus and they had been little more than ravening animals. She couldn't possibly be infected with the same virus, but like them, she'd survived impossible injuries.

She wished that she'd had a chance to find out more. Marcus may have been insane, but she was sure he could have answered her questions, and anything would have been better than not knowing and guessing about everything.

First things first, she had to eat.

Not bothering to get dressed, she simply kept the towel wrapped around her when she left the bathroom. It wasn't like she was expecting anyone after all.

While she'd been resting, the leeches had been exploring, making their way up and down the hall and throughout the entire apartment.

One of them crawled towards her, and she looked down to watch it. It must have ended up finding some corner she'd missed while vacuuming, to poke around in and had ended up getting covered in dust and fuzz from the carpet. It was a surprise that she'd noticed it, because the dust and dim light made it nearly impossible to see. Yet, there was no way she could have missed it. Her eyes were drawn to the little thing, because of the rest of the leeches she supposed. They were communicating to each other, and this one was upset and making its distress clear to the others.

When she bent down to pick it up, it lifted its front half, reaching up to her. The moment her fingers touched it, the leech relaxed. It knew that she would be able to do something about the dust clinging to it and trusted that she would.

Carrying the leech into the kitchen, she turned on the tap, which proved far easier than it had been the previous day, when her hands had been numb and stiff with rigor mortis.

Because, she'd been dead.

She had to stop thinking about it, before she went crazy.

If she wasn't already crazy.

She held the dust covered leech under the running water, washing the dust away. Curious, or possibly wanting to play, leeches began to emerge and slither down her arms, until her hands were full of the squirming creatures. They liked running water, which was strange, because she was sure that they were supposed to prefer stagnant water. Several fell out, landing in the sink, amidst the dirty dishes where they began to amuse themselves by trying to climb up the pile, against the flow of the water.

After she ate, she'd take care of the dishes. It would give her something to do other than thinking about what had happened. The leeches were bad enough, but if she kept thinking about what they meant, it would only make things worse.

Leaving them in the sink, she walked across the kitchen to turn on the light, so she could see what she was doing. She could feel the tension as the leeches anticipated the change in light level. They didn't like it, but they were going to have to deal with it.

Squinting in the light, she stared at the kitchen and immediately wished that she'd left the lights off. There were leeches everywhere, not just in the sink, but on the counter, the table, crawling across the floor and up the walls, dozens of fat, blackish-green worms on every surface.

They'd found the trash and they'd swarmed it, rummaging around inside and passing food to each other. The way they shared was interesting, a line of leeches going into the trash and a second line leaving. A cluster waited at the bottom to receive morsels of food from those that had finished eating. There was no fighting over food, they didn't attack each other.

Director Marcus had said that they would respond to her, like she was part of their swarm. If that was true, then she was safe. She hoped it was true, because she didn't want to have to live with the constant fear of being eaten alive, until she could figure out how to get rid of them.

Looking around the kitchen, trying to figure out what she wanted to eat, if she could bring herself to eat given what was going on, she realized that the leeches had been busier than she'd thought.

In addition to the garbage, they'd found the fruit she'd left on the counter from her last shopping trip. A group of them were working together to break down the apples into something manageable, the largest ones eating their fill and then biting off pieces to pass to others and share. Others were working at the bunch of bananas. Those had proven more difficult, but some of the larger leeches had managed to bore holes in the peels, allowing smaller leeches to enter and eat them from the inside out. The oranges were all untouched, though as she watched a pair of particularly large leeches work together to roll one off the counter.

When she picked it up and put it back, they immediately slithered over to repeat the process.

Picking it up again, she glared at the leeches as they waited at the edge of the counter, "No."

They backed up a little, but as soon as she put the orange down, they were moving towards it again.

After a third time, she figured out what was going on and peeled the orange for them. They'd known it was food, but the rind had been too thick for them to break through, so they'd gotten her to do it for them.

It was a good thing, she decided, that they'd discovered the fruit and started eating it on their own. It meant that the leeches weren't obligate carnivores, they were probably facultative omnivores, or maybe, like normal leeches, they were detritivores with a taste for meat.

Whatever their dietary preferences, she was okay with them liking fruit, because anything was better than what she'd been afraid of, that they only ate meat and would start wandering the apartment building, attacking the other tenants, forcing her to…

The peeled orange hit the floor with a soft splat, the leeches that had tried eating it writhing on the countertop. Apparently, the taste didn't appeal to them. She picked it up a last time, watching as the leeches that had tried it squirmed their way to the sink and dropped into the water to wash the taste away. Shuddering, she dropped it into the garbage, much to the displeasure of the leeches there.

Another group had found a loaf of bread, managed to work their way into the bag and were pulling chunks out, working together like ants to drag them across the counter and dropping them into the sink to soak and soften.

Having a kitchen full of leeches wasn't doing her appetite much good, but she had to eat.

In the end, she decided on a bowl of cereal, because that was something she could eat in the living room while she watched TV, rather than watching leeches while she ate in the kitchen. The leeches watched her intently, chewing at the cereal box when she put it down on the counter and trying to climb up the milk carton. She had to carefully pick them off, before she put it away and by that time, several leeches were already investigating the bowl of brightly colored, supposedly fruit flavored, shapes.

She briefly considered dumping the bowl and pouring herself a new one, when she watched one of the leeches grab a piece of cereal out of it and swallow it whole, a bulge moving down its body as it swallowed. The thing was, she knew it was pointless. They were inside her, and throwing something out because the leeches had touched it wouldn't do any good.

Leaving the kitchen, she went into the mercifully leech free living room and looked out the window. It was still dark out, or as dark as it got in Raccoon City. Light from streetlamps shone in through the window, enough for her to see what she was doing, and in the distance the horizon was bright, not from the approaching day, but from the lights of the city proper. In the city, she'd learned that it was never actually dark. She considered turning on the lamp on the end table near the couch, but she decided against it, just in case there were leeches in the living room too. She didn't want to see them, not when she could already feel them. Not in her, but all around her. If she paid too much attention to it, she could feel them moving, eating, exploring.

Forcing herself to ignore them, she turned on the TV. Somewhere in the room, leeches recoiled at the new source of light and moved away, under the couch. That was fine, they could stay there, out of sight.

She pulled her feet up onto the couch, so she wouldn't have to worry about one of them reaching out from under it and brushing against her while she was watching TV. She skimmed through the channels until she got to the local news, and decided, out of morbid curiosity, to see what was being said about the incident.

Far less than she'd expected, was what it turned out to be, though she quickly learned the reason why when, after talking about renovations taking place at the local university, the cheerfully pre-recorded anchorwoman's expression grew grave. Rebecca leaned forward, wondering how any of what had happened could be explained.

"Cleanup crews continue to work diligently after three days at the site of what was once the historic Spencer Estate. So far, there's no conclusive proof of what caused the explosion, but evidence suggests that the most likely cause was a gas leak. A second team is still searching for the S.T.A.R.S. helicopter that crashed in an unrelated incident, as well as the crew that initially went to look for survivors. So far, all S.T.A.R.S. members, from both groups, remain missing. It's hoped that the discovery of the crash site will yield some clue as to what happened to the ill-fated law enforcement teams."

Rebecca stared at the screen. All of it was horrible, most of it was wrong, but what stuck with her was that it had been three days since everything had happened. For three days, she'd been laying in the bathtub, somewhere between dreaming and awake, without realizing that it was even happening. Blaming it on stress and exhaustion was easy enough, but she knew that she was going to have to be careful not to let it happen again.

At least it explained why she was hungry.

Shivering at the cold, she picked up her spoon and stared at it. Slime dripped from it, little flecks of cereal stuck in the mess. She looked down into the bowl.

It was full of leeches. They'd already drank all the milk and were squirming around to get the last bits of cereal.

How had they managed that without her noticing? Where had they all come from?

As she watched, one of them crawled out of the bowl, reached out, pulled itself onto her hand. It stretched itself out as far as it could reach and pressed against her skin and flatting itself out, it faded from view.

Putting the bowl of leeches down on the coffee table, she wrapped her arms around her legs, pressed her face against her knees and tried not to cry.

What was she going to do? She couldn't get away from the leeches and their being there was a constant reminder of everything.

And they'd eaten her food when she wasn't paying attention. For some reason, that was the worst part of it. That they wouldn't even let her eat in peace.

Miserable, hungry and surrounded by leeches, she wondered if her situation could possibly get any worse.

It wasn't much of a question though.

Of course, it could be worse.

She could be actually dead, rather than whatever she was, and Umbrella could get away with everything they'd done. They wouldn't though, not when she and the other, real, survivors were still around to tell the story of what had happened in the mansion. The woman on the news had been wrong about there being no survivors. She'd have to figure out a way to help, and maybe she could. Chris and Jill had to be out there somewhere, maybe making plans with Barry at this very moment on how to best share the story of what had happened. It was pretty unbelievable after all, but there was proof, there had to be, and maybe that was where she could help. Umbrella couldn't have hidden everything perfectly, and maybe she could find a way to bring some of their more shady dealings to light.

But first, breakfast, because she was still hungry.

Carrying the bowl of leeches into the kitchen, she poured them into the sink and got herself a fresh bowl to try again. The moment she put it down on the counter, the leeches closest to it began to converge. She could feel them moving towards it, waiting for food.

"No!" she waved her hands, as though she could shoo them away, "It's not for you."  
They stopped moving.

Marcus had gotten the leech man to fall apart with a wave of his hand. They had listened to him. Maybe they'd do the same for her.

"Leave it alone!"

A few of them turned around.

"Yes! That's right," she couldn't believe what she was doing, talking at them like they could understand, but at her urging more and more of them moved away from the bowl, "Good."

Once they were far enough back that she felt it was safe to look away, she got out the milk and cereal again and poured herself a second bowl. This time, she didn't bother leaving the kitchen, she stood there and looked fixedly down at the brightly colored sugary cereal. With the way she could sense the leeches, it wasn't as though moving away from them would do her any good anyway.

The first mouthful was completely flavorless. Without thinking, she put the bowl down and checked the date on the box. It wasn't stale, the texture was the same as always.

Swallowing with some difficulty, she tried again. Nothing.

The cereal was fine, and she definitely would have tasted something if the milk was sour, so the problem wasn't with the food.

It was with her.

There was no reason to panic though, maybe it was just a side effect of what had happened with her. Maybe, like the stiffness, it would fade over time.

She swallowed the mouthful she'd been chewing and nearly gagged.

Something was wrong. She couldn't get the food down, it was stuck in the back of her throat. Choking wasn't a risk, since she wasn't breathing to begin with. In fact, nothing happened when, in response to the thought of it, she tried. There wasn't any feeling of movement in her chest or anything, no drawing in of air, nothing.

The leeches had stopped trying.

No, she realized, looking at how large the ones in the kitchen were, it wasn't that they weren't trying, it was that they'd grown so large they'd likely filled her chest cavity entirely. Were they pressing on the rest of her organs, closing her throat, preventing her from being able to swallow?

The sensation of something stuck in the back of her throat faded.

Leeches slid across the floor, towards her.

Others moved away, an orderly procession like at the garbage can.

Coming and going, the ones that had eaten their fill bringing food to the others, or trading places with others so they could leave to forage for themselves.

She watched a leech slither down her leg, another crawling up to take its place.

The ones on the counter wanted the bowl of cereal.

"Fine, you can have it."

Some went to the cereal, others took things a step further. She'd left the carton of milk out and they latched onto it. The cereal box was also still on the counter, and by banding together they were able to push it over. Brightly colored pieces scattered in all directions, the leeches on the floor breaking their line to chase after them.

By the time the leeches had finished the milk and most of the cereal, and she wasn't hungry anymore, the sun was just starting to come up. Watching the leeches, she understood that what she felt had nothing to do with her being hungry or not. It was that the leeches that were part of her at the moment, were all ones that had eaten their fill. Some of the other leeches were still hungry, hunting down the last bits of cereal and continuing to search through the kitchen.

The sunlight shining in through the windows was starting to upset the leeches, she could feel it, anxiety she had no reason to feel and the first inklings of thirst starting up.

She'd fill the bathtub for them, but she wouldn't get in, not after losing three days to them. Until she figured out a way to be sure that she'd wake up again, she wasn't even going to try and rest, at least not in the bath. There was no telling what the leeches would do during that time and she didn't dare take any chances. If they hurt someone, if she hurt someone…

She couldn't think like that, constantly worrying about everything, wondering what she was, it would drive her crazy. Right now, what she had to do was stay focused on getting things under control as much as she could, figuring out a way to stop Umbrella and figuring out how much of her there was left. There was enough, there had to be. She could still think and worry about what she'd become, so she was still herself, not some monster. She was connected in some way to the leeches, but there had to be a way of breaking that connection, separating them from her and then fixing what was left.

That was what she considered as she walked back to the bathroom, how to fix what was left. There was no telling the kind of research that was being done by Umbrella. What she'd seen was only a small sampling, part of some larger project and who knew how many other projects were going on at the same time? Once what Umbrella was doing was brought to light legitimate, honest scientists would be brought in to investigate the experiments that had been done, look through the research and find practical, useful applications for it. When that happens, she could go to them, explain the leeches and get help.

They would help her.

They had to.

And the best way to make it happen would be to help stop Umbrella.

She had Barry's phone number, he could help her get in touch with Chris and Jill, because they had to be out there, somewhere, laying low. The four of them working together could do something.

Once she filled the bath, so the leeches wouldn't be a distraction, she could call him and…

It was light enough out that she could see into the bathroom, and what she saw didn't make sense. There was a layer of something coating the bottom of the tub. It wasn't leeches, she could see them wriggling through it, feel them looking for any last bits of food.

Unable to figure out what it was that she was looking at, she turned on the light. A thick yellow-brown scum coated the bottom of the tub. Leeches had dragged trails of it up the walls and across the floor. When she'd left the bath, she'd tracked it across the towel she kept folded on the floor in front of the tub. On the sides of the tub, there was a distinct dark brown ring, marking where the water had been during her three day long soak.

She'd been dead in there and as fast as the leeches had eaten, dead things started to rot.

There was nothing she could do, no going back. Stopping Umbrella wouldn't fix anything for her, being dead wasn't something that could be fixed, especially not when she was so far gone. She still had to stop Umbrella though, because of what they were doing, what they had done.

The leeches wanted water, the ones in the tub had stopped looking for food and were waiting. The ones that had been wandering were starting to gather, making their way back into the bathroom. Her own feelings of thirst increased.

She couldn't go back in the bath though, not when…

It was another of the things she couldn't think about. Until she figured things out better, it would be best to keep things simple, focused. Horrible as the thought of it was, she was going to have to clean the bathroom, then she could worry about what to do next.

The leeches were large enough that they wouldn't wash down the drain, so she turned on the shower to see how much of the mess she could wash away without actually having to touch it. Yes, she'd been laying in it for days, but that was one of the things that she wasn't going to think about.

While the shower ran, she picked up the towel that had been on the floor, shaking it thoroughly to make sure there were no leeches stuck to it and tossed it in the hamper. She did the same with the towel she had used, and her uniform, which was still on the floor. Afterwards, she got dressed and went to check on the bathroom.

Most of the mess had washed away, but that only served to reveal a new horror. Little bits of something lay scattered across the bottom of the bathtub. Closer inspection revealed them to be bones, a collection of carpals and phalanges.  
Terrified she rubbed at her hands and, with effort, was able to feel where the bones were missing, the soft bodies of the leeches yielding to her examinations. Taking the fingers of her left hand in her right, she slowly bent them backwards. There was a moment of hesitation when they reached, what should have been, the limit of their range of movement, then the leeches understood and stopped resisting, allowing themselves to bend backwards until they were pressed against the back of her hand. Their mimicry had broken down slightly, the skin of her left hand taking on a mottled brown and green appearance. It was especially noticeable with her fingers, where she could see the distinct ringed bodies of the leeches twisting together into shape. They'd grown large enough, strong enough, that they didn't need the framework of bone to support them.

Releasing her hand, she watched as they flexed back into place, their mimicry of form returning before they finished changing color.

They'd done so much and managed all of it without her noticing, leaving her unsure if she should be horrified or impressed.

Both was probably the best answer.

Wringing her hands, testing the way the leeches moved, searching for the point at which things started to feel wrong, she stared at the bones. She had to do something with them. Leaving them there wasn't an option, not when she still had to clean the tub, so she could fill it up for the leeches, to keep them happy, so she could try and act like things were otherwise normal.

Throwing them out was too dangerous. They were small, hardly noticeable, but if on the off chance that someone found them, somehow, there was no telling what might happen. The last thing she wanted was to end up the primary suspect in her own murder.

She could keep them as proof of what had happened to her, that Marcus and Umbrella really were making monsters, but what then? She'd be admitting that she was dead, that the leeches had replaced her. That wasn't an option, because if she was just leeches, it meant that she wasn't human and that anything could be done to her. She could be locked away, used as a test subject and technically, there wouldn't be anything wrong with that, because she was just leeches.

It was something that never would have occurred to her in the past, but after seeing what Umbrella had done, murder, human experimentation and worse, it was easy to imagine someone doing horrible things to her with the justification of 'it's just leeches'. One of the leeches was just an ordinary leech, even a group of them wasn't anything exceptional. Maybe they were larger than they should have been, smarter, but on their own, they were just leeches. The ones searching for food in the kitchen were proof of that. Without her directing them they were nothing more than animals acting on instinct.

The thing was, it wasn't as though a certain set of leeches made her. They were all interchangeable, the way they came and went, the ones that were a part of her trading places with those that had been wandering, proved that the leeches as a whole made her. Take them all apart and they weren't her, they really were just leeches.

She had to keep the truth about what had happened to her hidden. For now, at least. Once Umbrella was taken care of, things might be safer. By then, she might have figured something out.

Gathering the bones, she took them and hid them away in a shoebox in the back corner of her bedroom closet. Later, when she'd calmed down, she'd figure out a better, more permeant hiding spot. First though, she had to deal with the increasing thirst of the leeches, then she'd be able to concentrate better.

Or would it be a case of the leeches that made her being less distracted?

How was she even supposed to tell what was her and what was the leeches? When enough of them wanted water, she got thirsty; when enough of them were hungry, so was she. What if there wasn't even a 'her' anymore? What if Rebecca Chambers, the person, really was gone and all that was left was a bunch of leeches mimicking what she would have done? They could imitate her appearance perfectly after all, at least on the surface.

It might be the same with her mind. She might not really be herself anymore, but if that were the case, how would she tell, how would she figure out if she was doing something because it was something she would do, versus something the leeches wanted to do or thought she would do.

And if it was all the leeches, how would she even know?

Would she even want to know?

She could look to what had happened with director Marcus. She'd read his diary entries and research notes from before what had happened to him, and they lined up with how he'd acted when she met him, but was that really proof of anything?

Yes, she realized, it was, proof of what Umbrella had done and she hadn't thought to keep them with her. Now, she had nothing expect herself.

If she revealed what had happened to her it, would be irrefutable proof of what Umbrella was doing, especially if the leeches carried the Tyrant virus. That would be everything she needed, but she was too afraid to do that. Somehow, whoever she told might hand her over to Umbrella. It was unlikely, but did she really know how far the company's grasp extended? One mistake and she might be giving herself to them.

Except, maybe, it was the leeches trying to protect themselves. Maybe, they didn't want to be discovered for reasons she couldn't understand.

She paced the apartment, trying to figure out what she could do, how to tell if she really was herself or just leeches. Could she call a friend from college, ask them to ask her a question that only she'd know the answer to, answer it and then get into a discussion about if the answer she gave was the one they had expected her to give, or if it was just something that sounded like something she'd say? In addition to sounding completely insane and being a headache to even think about, there was the problem of her not really having any close friends from college.

She could always call her parents, but how would that conversation go? 'Hi mom, hi dad, I think I'm actually an aggregate of debatably sentient leeches, I need you to figure out if I'm actually your daughter or just leeches. Mind talking to me for a while to see if there's anything off about me?'

Not happening.

Around her, the leeches stopped exploring, started following her movements and squirming agitatedly.

She was upset, they were upset and everything she thought of only made things worse.

Was it because she was fighting them, trying to reassert some sense of self? Or was it just that she was stuck in a positive feedback loop, her own stress distressing the leeches, which in turn made it worse for her?

The latter was at least something she could test. After that, she could figure out how to test if she was capable of acting contrary to the leeches desires.

Going back to the bathroom, she turned off the shower, much to the displeasure of the leeches in it. Ignoring what they wanted, she started to pick them up, because she couldn't clean the bathtub with them in it. Some of them joined the leeches that were making her, the others she carried in a handful to the sink and put them there before going back for more. As she picked them up, they caught on to what was happening and started crawling out of the tub on their own. That was good, it made things go that much faster and meant that she didn't have to touch them.

Except, she was them.

Her hands…

When the tub was empty, she started to go to the closet in the hall where she kept cleaning supplies to get bleach, but then she remembered hearing somewhere that peroxide worked better for organic stains, so she went back to the bathroom and got a bottle of hydrogen peroxide out of the medicine cabinet.

Taking the cap off, trying not to consider how strong and dexterous the leeches making her hands had to be to manage something like that, she started to pour it down the sides of the tub.

Careless in her efforts to clean, some splashed up and landed on her hands.

Screaming, she dropped the bottle and staggered back.

The leeches that had been hit were visible, writhing across her hands, spreading the liquid in their agonized squirming. The ones around them joined in, moving away in an effort to avoid contact with the caustic chemical. Their mimicry broke down entirely, leaving her arms a sea of moving brown and green bodies and the occasional glimpse of bone beneath.

Sobbing in pain, she staggered to the sink, turned it on, and ran her hands under the water to wash it away and hopefully sooth the agony. For a long while, she leaned against the sink, eyes closed as she waited for the pain to fade.

Eventually, it did and when she opened her eyes, her arms were perfectly normal, not a trace of what had happened remaining. In the sink, the leeches swam, happily, enjoying the water and working together to eat the ones that had been killed by their injuries.

Letting out a soft moan of disgust, she turned off the water and looked back at the tub.

She had a pair of dish gloves in the kitchen. Grabbing them and an old sponge, she finished cleaning the bathtub, while the leeches watched anxiously from the sink and walls.

She could feel their fear, the way they were transmitting awareness of what had happened as a warning to the ones in the rest of the apartment. Ignoring them, she finished cleaning.

When she was done, the tub was spotless, not a trace of the fact that there had been a body rotting in it for days remaining.

To be safe, she rinsed it half a dozen times, to be sure that there was no trace of hydrogen peroxide remaining, then ran a hand over it. No pain, no burning, nothing other than the leeches fear.

Satisfied, she putt the stopper in the drain and let the tub begin to fill.

The leeches remained on the wall, torn between desire for water and fear of pain.

They were thirsty, but there was no way that she was going in the tub herself.

Several of them started to inch down the walls, but none of them actually approached the tub.

There was only one thing to do.

Plucking several of them off the wall, she dropped them in the tub. They thrashed in the water, the ones on the walls squirming in sympathetic response to pain that never came. A moment of confusion was followed by realization and they began to crawl towards the tub, gathering in a ball under the tap in the hope that she would turn it on, so that they could play in the moving water.

She'd found her test, her proof that she was the one in control and she'd done it without even meaning to.

Reassured, she turned on the water and watched them tumble against the bottom and sides of the tub.

They felt better, she felt better.

Now, it was time for her to start thinking things through.


	5. An Unbelievable Story

**Notes:** Thank you all for reading and reviewing. CrystalFlame360 continues to beta read my chapters, which is a huge help. I'm sorry that my updates have been sporadic, I keep getting sidetracked by countless little side projects.

o0o

The phone rang. Nothing out of the ordinary there. She could handle a simple phone call. It was as good a distraction as any, and she desperately needed a distraction.

"Hi, Rebecca here," she answered, expecting maybe her parents, or even Chris or Jill calling to check in on her. Except, neither Chris nor Jill had her number, so there was no way it could be from them.

"Agent Chambers?"

It took her longer than it should have to recognize the gruff male voice on the other end, Chief Irons.

She swallowed nervously, or tried to, the action wasn't really something the leeches could manage, "Yes?"

S.T.A.R.S. was technically a part of the city police department, so there was no reason she should have been surprised to hear from someone in the department, especially after not showing up to work for nearly a week. Still, Chief Irons? It had to mean she was in trouble. More trouble than she was already, since she still hadn't figured out what she was going to do about anything.

"You're going to need to come in for questioning," he began, his tone as unrelenting as always, "About what happened to Bravo team and then, what followed at the old Spencer Estate. Valentine and Redfield gave a rather unusual account, and I hope that your version of events makes more sense."

There was an implied threat in there, but she couldn't figure out where or why. If Jill and Chris had already explained, there was no reason for her to show up, was there? Or was it just part of procedure?

Staring at the wall across the room, she watched as a leech emerged from a thin gap between the trim and the floor. It was just as she'd feared, they were getting into the walls. If she wasn't careful they'd infest the whole building, get into other apartments and…

"Agent Chambers? Are you still there?"

She'd been letting her mind wander, trying to get a feel of how many leeches were in the walls. The sound of Chief Irons' voice pulled her back to the here and now.

"Yes, I'm here," another leech squeezed its way back into the apartment. She could try making them come back, since they tended to respond to what she was thinking. After that, she could go around and seal up every gap she found to prevent them from getting back out. There was a roll of duct tape in the hall closet. Hopefully, it would be enough, "Since you've called me, can we just do this over the phone?"  
She was going to have to go out soon, she was running low on food and if the tape wasn't enough, she was going to need to figure out some other way of preventing the leeches from escaping. She didn't trust them enough to leave them alone. They were staying in the apartment, because she was there and she was staying in the apartment, because the last thing she wanted, was for them to start wandering more than they already were.

The leeches were keeping her trapped, not directly, but they were. It presented a tricky dilemma for her to solve.

"This has to be," a short pause, "Official."

She didn't like the sound of the pause, it had the feeling of someone fishing for the right word and, then settling on the closest substitute. There were many times she'd heard herself do it since joining S.T.A.R.S. Hearing it from someone who was supposed to be in charge, set off all sorts of alarm bells. Her first thought was of Captain Wesker, his betrayal, but that was just her being paranoid. There was no way that all of the higher-ups in Raccoon City's law enforcement were in Umbrella's payroll, which meant –

"How much did Chris tell you?" Rebecca asked, watching as the second leech struggled to pull itself out of the gap. If Chris had told Chief Irons what she'd said about Director Marcus, then she'd have a lot of explaining to do. Chris hadn't understood what she'd meant, not that she'd been terribly coherent at the time, and he might have told it all wrong. It would make her seem crazy.

And if Chris had mentioned the leeches…

Then there was no doubt that Chief Irons would think she was crazy.

"Agents Redfield and Valentine told me a great deal," he spoke slowly, carefully. Rebecca couldn't tell if it was for her benefit, or if he was thinking things over, "I'm going to need to hear your version of events though. Their accounts, though consistent with each other, have a large number of holes. To put it simply, their story was outlandish to say the least, and I'm hoping that you can give me a more coherent account of what happened at the mansion."

The mansion? That was what he wanted to know about? She could do that, "But what about Bravo Team?"

The Chief was silent for a long while, making her regret having asked. If she'd kept silent, she might have gotten away with leaving out some of the worst details of how badly she'd messed up.

"If it's necessary," he said, again speaking with great care, "What happened at the mansion is what matters though."

She was being given exactly what she'd hoped for, the chance to tell what had happened, so why couldn't she let it rest at that? Even if it felt too good to be true, wasn't she owed that after all she'd been through?

A nagging doubt remained, but she did her best to ignore it. Part of it was probably due to how little she liked Chief Irons. As a member of S.T.A.R.S., she hadn't had too much interaction with him, but what little there had been had been awkward.

"Are you sure I can't just tell you over the phone?"

It was too much to hope for, but she was going to at least try.

"I insist on seeing you in person, and as soon as possible."

There was an implied threat in that, and an obvious one too. He was the police chief after all, he didn't need to ask her to come, he could simply send an officer to collect her and she'd have no choice.

The leech was still trying to get back into the room. It wasn't any bigger than the first had been, but somehow it had gotten stuck. Once she got off the phone, she'd need to go see what its problem was. Not that she cared about its predicament, but it was distracting. Before she left, she was going to need to deal with it, and any others that were in the walls, then she'd need to think of a way to keep them from getting out again while she was away.

Or worse, trying to follow her.

"I'm really busy right now," a weak excuse, but she needed to try, "Can I come by later?"

"How late?"

Was she crazy, or did Chief Irons sound happy about her trying to put things off?

Either way, she decided to press her luck, "Late. Like, tonight late."

Because she couldn't go out during the day, not when it was so sunny out that she'd had to close the blinds just to be able to get around the apartment.

"Wonderful," this time, she knew she wasn't crazy. Chief Irons had actually let out a sigh of relief, "I've got a lot to get done myself, and that should give me time to take care of it. Come by at ten. The bus lines run late this time of year, so you shouldn't have any trouble. By that time, I'll have everything wrapped up and be able to send home any unneeded personnel. Agents Redfield and Valentine said you'd had a hard time of things, so I figure it will be easier for you if it's just you and me. Just because things have to be official, doesn't mean that we have to do things entirely by the books, right?"

Ten o'clock? Not only did that give her all day to deal with the leeches, it meant that she wouldn't have to leave her apartment until after dark, and there wouldn't be as many people around.

"Thank you so much! I'll be there!" she all, but laughed, with relief.

"Perfect."

It wasn't until after she'd hung up the phone that she realized that not one single thing about the situation felt right. Chief Irons had always unnerved her, and meeting with him alone in the police station was intimidating to say the least, but there was more to it than that. Things were going too perfectly for her.

She wasn't able to dwell on it for too long though, the leech at the wall had finally managed to get back into the apartment, dragging the mangled remains of what was probably a mouse with it.

"Eat it!" she hissed at the leech, wishing that it hadn't brought back evidence of what they'd been doing in the walls. Hunting, and successfully. Until now, she hadn't realized that the apartment was infested, and she couldn't call the owner to get an exterminator, not unless she wanted to risk being found out.

Another leech reentered the apartment, this one also pulling something in with it.

"Don't do that," she pleaded, as the leech with the mouse began to make its way over to her. She wasn't so low on food that the leeches that were making her were hungry. There was no need for it to be bringing food back to the others.

Two more leeches came out of the gap, bringing with them, what she realized had to be, bits of a rat. Hopefully, just one rat, she didn't want to think about rodents living in the walls, getting in and out of her apartment just like the leeches.

The first leech lifted its front half, holding the mouse up for her to see, just like a cat showing off what it had brought back.

"Why?"

The leech continued to hold up the mouse, like she was supposed to take it.

It did expect her to take the mangled little thing, she could pick up on that much from it. She and the leeches shared some sort of connection, it was why she could sense them, exert some control over what they were doing, but despite all that the leeches were separate entities, just like she had thoughts of her own. A leech would have no trouble eating a mouse, but she wanted nothing to do with the idea. She'd already determined that she wasn't just the leeches, otherwise, she'd have no trouble spending all day in the bath, wouldn't worry about hurting anyone, wouldn't think that the dead mouse was disgusting.

The leeches wouldn't understand that though. They'd viewed her as part of their group since imprinting on her, protecting her when she'd been attacked by zombies, and before that, working together to keep her from bleeding out, or drowning, when Director Marcus had forced her into the vat with them.

Looking at it that way, it made sense, they were just bringing food back to her, responding to her thoughts about needing to go shopping.

Except, she couldn't eat.

"Just eat it, okay?" she sighed, wishing that she had more control over them, and immediately shuddering at the thought.

What she really wanted, was to have nothing to do with them, but that wasn't an option.

"If you eat it, I'll fill the bathtub for you."

That worked, though she wasn't sure if it was what she'd said, or if the thought alone had been enough. As little as she liked the idea, it was something she was going to need to figure out if she wanted to be able to leave the apartment.

o0o

She spent the rest of the day luring leeches out of the walls, with carefully placed bits of food and taping over every gap and hole they emerged from. Filling the bathtub worked fairly well to keep them from wandering back into the walls, though several of them kept trying to bring food in there with them. Since cleaning the tub after, what she'd decided to think of as, her three day soak, she wasn't about to let them start a repeat of that, especially when one emerged from behind the bathroom sink to drop a whole rat in the tub, before she was able to stop it. The others converged on the rat, tearing it to pieces, before she could stop them. When she got home, she was going to have to drain the tub, get the leeches out and check for bones, and other leftover bits from their meal, something for her to look forward to.

On the bright side, gathering them all together gave her the chance to do some cleaning, something normal enough that she was able to forget about everything else while doing it. Knowing that she was one step to getting things resolved in one way or another, also helped. She wasn't looking forward to her meeting with Chief Irons, but having no choice in the matter actually helped. Now that she had to go, it gave her something to focus on.

Like how convenient it was that he was letting her arrive so late. He hadn't even questioned why she'd want to come so late, and making sure that there would be as few people around as possible, only served to help make things easier for her. The explanation was obvious too, as far as she was concerned, the Chief had heard Chris and Jill's account of what had happened, and it was bound to have been terrifying if it was even half as bad as what had happened with her before they all met up. The last thing he wanted, was for anyone in the police station to overhear and start talking about it. There would be a full on panic in no time at all if word got out, so Chief Irons wanted to have everything in order before he contacted the authorities to get help with what happened.

It had nothing to do with the fact that the whole city was pretty much built up around Umbrella Corporation, and anything that hurt it, would do to Raccoon City what the collapse of the steel industry had done to all those towns and cities in Pennsylvania. It was a serious accusation, but Chief Irons would have to believe it, since the three of them, four counting Barry, would all back up what the others said.

It wouldn't be the first time a huge company was brought down by people revealing the truth.

Umbrella was making monsters, and that was something that couldn't be covered up or ignored.

Any misgivings she had about the whole situation, were because she found being around Chief Irons to be unnerving. It wasn't his fault though, her interactions with him had been pleasant enough, if awkward, but that was only because she was the youngest member of S.T.A.R.S. and felt like a little kid pretending to be someone she wasn't, whenever she was around the city's Police Chief. She'd always expected Irons to call her on it, point out that she didn't have anywhere near enough experience with anything to be doing what she was doing, but he never did. He was polite, eloquent and even tried to make conversation with her, treating her like she was an adult, despite the fact that she hadn't been old enough to drink at the time she was hired.

She just wished that he hadn't taken her having majored in biochemistry, as meaning that she'd want to hear all about his contributions to the local museum's collection of taxidermy animals. It explained why the department was decorated with deer heads, but she really hadn't wanted to know the trick for how to properly mount a turkey's tail feathers, even if it was easy and a great way to get started with taxidermy as a hobby. Being told that he had some squirrels in his freezer if she wanted to practice also hadn't helped.

She knew he meant the freezer at his house, but that didn't stop her from eyeing the fridge in the breakroom with suspicion each time she walked by it, half expecting an ice covered squirrel to jump out at her.

With how much the leeches liked rats, at the moment they were nudging the bones across the bottom of the tub and testing where she'd taped over the hole in the wall, she wondered if maybe she should take Chief Irons up on his offer. It would be good for a laugh at least, even if he wouldn't know why it was funny for her.

Thinking of the leeches, she should probably get them out of the garbage so she could take it out. They'd done a good job of eating anything they could that she'd thrown out, but she didn't want to take the chance of it starting to stink. If the neighbors complained, she'd be in big trouble and she already felt like she'd dodged a bullet with what had happened with the bathtub.

If they hadn't been so fast, the smell would have been terrible and if someone had come to see what the problem was and if she hadn't gotten up in time, they might have found her in the tub with the leeches.

What was left of her.

She wasn't going to think about that, because it hadn't happened. What mattered, was that the leeches had been hungry or in a hurry, either way it worked out for her.

That was what mattered, not the rest of it.

By the time she was done sealing off every gap, it was already after dark. Stragglers had meant that she'd needed to remove the tape to let them back into the apartment and then retape everything once they were all in.

It was a good thing that she'd been feeding them during the day, because there wasn't time for her to fix a meal for herself. For them really, since she only got hungry when enough of them were.

She got dressed in a hurry, putting on a long sleeved shirt despite the warm weather, just in case the leeches started acting up. For the same reason, she chose her best fitting pair of jeans, even though she would have preferred shorts. Keeping the leeches covered would help keep them from drying out, and if there wasn't room for them to move, they probably wouldn't try anything.

There definitely wasn't time to take the garbage out, but that wasn't really a problem. There were still a few leeches rummaging around in there, and she didn't want to go digging around to make sure that they were all out. Missing one would mean that it would know where the dumpster next to the apartment was, and it might let the others know. Between the rotten food and rats, it would be too much for them to resist.

The issue of food was a tricky one, something she pondered while waiting at the bus stop, and continued to mull over on the ride to the station. She was going to need to keep them fed to keep them from hunting, and she was running low on food in the apartment. Once her meeting with the Chief was over, she should probably stop by an all-night grocer and see about doing some shopping. Except, that might be dangerous. With how the leeches came and went as they pleased, there was no telling what they'd do once they were in the store.

She didn't even know if they could transmit the Tyrant virus or not. Just taking the bus was more of a risk than she should be taking, when she didn't know how contagious it was. Didn't feel like a very safe guess though. Chris and Jill had clearly survived and from the sounds of things, they'd had some close calls with zombies. Chris had actually touched her, she'd ridden in Barry's car and nothing had happened.

The virus might be like rabies, only transmitted through bites. If that were the case, she'd be fine.

As long as none of the leeches wandered off.

She was going to need to be careful about that.

She spent the rest of the bus ride staring at the floor, looking closely at every little shadow to make sure that it wasn't a leech slithering away from her.

Back in the apartment, she should have done more to test her awareness of them, to see if there was a way to pick up on when they were on the move, or if there was a way to keep them together. There had to be, and it was something she did without thinking, otherwise, she wouldn't be sitting on the bus, she'd still be in the bathtub, nothing more than a swarm of leeches

She should have done more, but that would have required interacting with the leeches.

Eventually, she was going to have to do it, figure things out so that she could safely leave her apartment, rather than sit around waiting until she ran out of food. What would happen if enough of the leeches got hungry enough? They'd already started hunting. If more of them got hungry, more would go hunting until they'd all left.

Then, it would just be the leeches.

She'd be gone.

Rocking in place she rubbed at her arms, reassuring herself that they were still holding solidly in place, that the leeches hadn't started moving, weren't getting ready to disperse.

Something had to keep them together, and she needed to figure it out. It was the only way for her to be sure of anything.

If she figured it out, and figured out how contagious the Tyrant virus was, then maybe, she could make things work.

It wasn't like she had a choice in the matter, she had to find a way to deal with it, at least until what Umbrella was doing was revealed and the corporation was shut down for good.

That would be her goal, do what she could to help reach that end.

And going to the police station and telling Chief Irons everything was the first step.

Except, she wouldn't be telling him everything, just the parts that he needed to know.

Not about the leeches, or Billy.

Having a goal helped, and when the bus finally came to her stop, she walked off feeling more confident than she had in a long while. Confident enough, that she was able to walk into the creepy old building without worrying about how big and ominous it was, or how empty it was at such a late hour. Her footsteps sounded unpleasantly loud in her ears, the sound echoing through the building as she tried to figure out where she should go. Should she go to Chief Irons' office? The main desk to ask if there was somewhere she was supposed to meet him?

She'd only been at the station during the day, so maybe it was always like this at night. Maybe, there was no reason to be nervous, maybe she was overthinking things like she tended to, maybe –

"There you are!"

She let out a startled yelp at the sound of Chief Irons' voice.

"You-you startled me," she stammered, her tone making it an apology as she pressed a hand to her chest, expecting to feel her heart racing. Nothing. Her chest hardly even moved when she drew in a breath, just enough air to get the words out. All the leeches were breathing for themselves, "The bus – "

"Runs a little late at this hour, I know," the police chief gave her a smile that was far less reassuring than he probably meant it to be, "Let's just go to my office and take care of things, get this whole unpleasant business over with."

"Okay," she nodded, looking around at the empty halls as she followed him.  
"First things first," he spoke with his back to her, "S.T.A.R.S. is going to be officially disbanded. I wanted to let you know now, so when we're done you can clear out your belongings from your locker if you want. Otherwise, you can come back tomorrow."

"Oh."

It saved her a lot of trouble, but she still felt bad about it. Even if she'd been planning to quit anyway, she would have liked to say it for herself. Now, it was just one more thing that was out of her hands.

"In fact, you can take care of it now," his back was still to her, "Get it out of the way if you'd prefer."

"No thank you," she mumbled, looking down at her feet.

"That's fine."

Except, it wasn't. She could tell by his tone. He would have preferred her to go to where she and the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. kept their gear. Why? It wasn't like it was on the way to his office.

"I sent everyone home, so we wouldn't be interrupted. Took some doing," he laughed, "Had to tell a few white lies about who was in tonight, but I figured it was better this way."

He was back in his stride, confident again. Proud.

"I expect that your story will be similar to what Redfield and Valentine had to say," another laugh, "Zombies and monsters, right?"

When he put it that way, it did sound hard to believe.

"Bio-organic weapons, that was the term that showed up in the files we found," she offered as they arrived at the door to his office.

"Monsters in an old haunted house, because you know the story, right?" He opened the door and motioned for her to go inside, "That the architect who built the place went insane. Take a seat, this might take some time."

She did as told, careful to keep her eyes straight ahead and not look around the room. Carefully stuffed and mounted animals decorated the room, a reminder of his hobby. Rebecca had forgotten how unnerving all those blank glass eyes were, until she was once again surrounded by them. Her problem wasn't with the chief she decided, it was with his hobby, "No, I hadn't heard that."

There hadn't been the time or desire for her to look into local stories, though if she had known about the Spencer Estate, would that have changed anything? Of course not, she would have laughed it off, just like Chief Irons was.

Irons walked past her, pulled his chair away from the desk, but remained standing, "He disappeared shortly before construction was finished. His whole family went missing before that. The story is that he showed up to look at how things were coming along, and that was the last anyone saw of him. Most versions I've heard say that he never left, that he'd built a secret room into the house and locked himself away in it, along with his wife and daughter, who he'd murdered. The bodies were never found."

He finished the story with a small chuckle and a ghoulish smile.

Urban legends and tall tales, but his mention of a hidden room gave her something to segue in with, "There was a hidden room, a bunch of them actually. Below the mansion was a whole secret lab. That's where they were doing the experiments."

"Experiments?" Irons raised a questioning eyebrow, "What kind of experiments?"

"They were working with viruses, trying to…" she trailed off, realizing that, other than Marcus, she had no clear goal of what any of it had been about. There had been the notes and files she'd looked through, but they were from so many different experiments, recorded by so many people over such a length of time, she had no clue what the end goal of it all had been, "I think the goal was to make new types of biological weapons."

"So, the so called zombies and monsters were just people infected with some sort of disease, the result of an accident in this secret basement lab no doubt," Irons offered.

"Yes, well most of them," Rebecca corrected, "Some of them were animals."

Irons nodded, "Rabid dogs?"

"There were dogs," Rebecca shuddered at the memory of the zombie dogs. If Billy hadn't been there to deal with them…

Taking advantage of her silence, Irons continued for her, "So, you spent hours getting chased through the woods by rabid animals and then arrived at the Spencer Estate, which was full of dead and dying people."

"Zombies," she corrected, "It was full of zombies, and there were more infected animals. Other things too, bio-organic weapons, the notes called them B.O.W.s. Researchers at Umbrella were trying to make something they were calling a Tyrant. It was supposed to be the perfect B.O.W., strong, fast, nearly impossible to kill and intelligent. I saw the thing and it was horrible."

"Redfield and Valentine didn't mention this 'Tyrant' in their account of events," Irons said flatly.

"They might not have called it by that name. I don't know if they saw the same files that I did. I told Chris about it, but," she paused to gather her thoughts, recalling the muddled explanation she'd given to Chris when she'd first found him, how he'd thought she was crazy, "I don't think I explained it very well. They had to have told you about it though. I didn't get a very good look at it. Chris had killed it by the time I actually got a look at it, but it was big. Bigger than any person, much bigger. Its muscles were all wrong and its skin was like leather. I'm not sure, but I think I saw its heart, and not because of any injury. The organ was outside its chest, and all the arteries and veins were too."

Chief Irons' expression grew thoughtful, the barest hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, "Give me a moment, I think I've got it, I really do. Agents Redfield and Valentine told an interesting story, but not quite as literary as yours. Let me guess, your Tyrant, the perfect monster, was somewhere around eight feet tall and had 'yellow skin that scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath'. Am I right?"

"That's…" she stopped. His description was accurate, but the way he was smiling at her was far more unnerving than the collection of taxidermy animals decorating the room.

"Frankenstein's monster," the chief finished, "Clever bit of embellishment on your part, but it's not unexpected, is it? Redfield and Valentine, inspired by local legend, came up with a house full of zombies and secret experimentation to explain what happened, why they had to kill Captain Wesker. You took it a step farther and drew on a more classical source of inspiration. Don't look so surprised. When I went to college, I majored in English Literature. Not as practical as your field, but funny how things lined up this way, isn't it?"

"Wait," Rebecca pleaded, realizing that if she didn't do something, it was going to be a repeat of what had happened when she tried to tell Chris about what had happened to her, "I'm not making this up. Let me start at the beginning, before the mansion. Our helicopter crashed and –"

"You were the only survivor," Chief Irons cut her off, his smile slowly softening into what might have been a look of sympathy, or condescension, "You managed to get away from the crash site, but you were lost in the woods for over a day, wandering around helpless, looking for some sign of civilization. You managed to orient yourself, somehow, and find the Spencer Estate. By the time you got there, whatever had happened was over, or mostly over. Maybe you found it because of the flames. You ran into Redfield and Valentine there, possibly Burton at well. I haven't been able to get in touch with him for questioning yet, so I'm not sure what part he played in all this. Maybe you can help me with that. First though, I want you to confirm the little timeline of events I've pieced together. I'm assuming you saw some dead bodies, asked about that and Agents Redfield and Valentine, drawing on the history of the mansion, told you a story about secret, highly illegal, research taking place, monsters and viruses and zombies. That was why they had to burn it down, with Wesker inside it. Convenient that he was all behind it, when he went up in smoke along with any evidence of what happened."

What had happened that Irons was so badly mistaken about what had taken place at the mansion? She knew that their story was hard to believe, but Chris and Jill had to have done a better job of explaining things than that, "That's not how it happened! Please, let me explain! I know it sounds impossible, but I'm not making any of it up."

The leeches started to get agitated, wrapping her arms across her chest, she could feel them starting to squirm in response to her own fear. Fight or flight instincts, all animals possessed them. What would the leeches do? Pull away from her and swarm Irons? Or would they scatter, slithering off to hide in the shadows of the police office? Calm down, she had to calm down, get her thoughts straight and explain the truth in a way that didn't make her sound crazy.

Irons looked at her, for the first time during the interview he showed concern, "You weren't bitten, were you?"

He believed her!

"No," the lie, the first one she'd told during the whole conversation, came easily because it was the one thing that she'd been truly ready to say, "I didn't get bitten."

"Good," Irons let out a sigh of relief and finally sat down, "But, you don't have any proof and the story you're trying to tell sounds impossible. So, let's try and get some of the details hashed out. Did the mansion catch fire before or after you arrived?"

"After," she looked cautiously at Chief Irons, trying to figure out the abrupt change in demeanor.

Irons nodded and bent down to start rummaging around in the drawers of his desk, continuing to talk to her as he did so, "Good, and did you meet up with Agents Redfield and Valentine before the fire started?"

"Before," she leaned forward, wondering what he was looking for.

"Hmm, that's where things get complicated, isn't it," he muttered mostly to himself as he continued to ignore her, "You had time to wander the mansion first, so that means that the doors were open and unlocked when you arrived?"

"Yes," the leeches were starting to calm down, "I went inside and started looking for help."

"That works well enough. So far it all sounds reasonable and makes perfect sense," finding what he was looking for, he straightened up and put the object on his desk. A simple silver flask.

"But before that –" she began, only for Irons to cut her off again.

"No, focus on the mansion incident," he opened the flask and took a drink, "With the rest of Bravo team dead there's no one to corroborate what happened before. The mansion was unlocked, abandoned, but there were signs of a struggle. Dead bodies?"

He had a point there, but she didn't like the direction things were starting to go in. In fact, it sounded like Chief Irons, once again, thought she was making things up.

No, there was more to it than that. How worried he'd been when he thought that she'd been bitten by a zombie told her that much. So, what was she missing this time?

"There were dead bodies, some of them had been partially eaten," she spoke slowly, trying to get as much time as she could to figure things out.

"By animals," the chief responded with equal deliberation, "Because, they'd been dead for some time and the doors to the mansion had been left open. A pack of stray dogs probably."

He couldn't have missed the point more badly if he'd tried.

The realization was a physical thing, like a punch to the gut. She could feel the leeches starting to squirm again. It wasn't that Irons didn't believe her, it was that he knew she was telling the truth and for some reason didn't want to accept it.

Yes, it was outlandish, hard to believe and terrifying, but this went beyond that. He knew it was real and was still pressing her to change her story, help him create whatever narrative it was that he was trying to piece together. If Umbrella went down, it would hurt the city and all the people would suffer. Jobs would be lost, the economy would be done for. Was Chief Irons trying to keep Umbrella safe to keep the city safe?

Or was it worse than that?

Captain Wesker had been part of it all.

She couldn't take any chances, not until she knew.

"It was probably dogs," she sighed, looking down at the floor, "I was chased by them and ended up locking myself in a bedroom to hide."

"That's good," Irons took another drink from his flask and smiled, "You were trapped, so you didn't see any of what happened."

"Exactly," she continued to stare fixedly at her shoes, making sure that no leeches had fallen to the floor to make their way towards the chief. He might have been trying to tamp down an unpleasant story, one that would cause panic if it got out, he might have been trying to protect Umbrella's interests to ensure the city's economic survival, he might even have been working for Umbrella.

She hoped it wasn't the last possibility, but even if it was, if the leeches attacked him it wouldn't do any good. They'd probably have an even easier time taking him down than the zombies. They were so much larger now, and it was so easy for a person to die. If she wasn't careful, he'd be dead before she could stop them.

Movement in her sleeve let her know that at least one leech was considering doing something. Folding her hands in her lap, she grabbed onto the end of her sleeve to keep it in place

"You stayed there until you heard voices outside the door, Redfield and Valentine. What were they talking about?"

The leech in her sleeve tensed, hook-teeth pulling at the fabric. Shifting in place, she tried to discreetly put a hand over it, as though she might be able to press it back into place. It pressed back up against her hand, rubbing against it like a cat.

Somehow, for some reason, they distinguished between her and them, despite the fact that they were what made her.

It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.

"Agent Chambers?"

She stared blankly at the chief, trying to figure out what she was supposed to say.

"What were they talking about?"

"I…" the leech grew tense again. She pushed down harder against it, willing it to rejoin the others. Another was trying to work its way down her leg, fortunately, it wasn't making much progress thanks to how tight the denim was against her skin, "I don't know. When I heard them I yelled for help and they stopped talking."

She had to stay calm, hold things together. Literally.

Irons' expression grew thoughtful, "I see. Once they found you, they started talking again though, told you a story about monsters and viruses. Why did you go along with it?"

The same reason she was going along with what Irons was doing, "Because, I was frightened."

"That's a pity," he beamed, "You were too shaken by everything that happened to have a coherent account of anything. Which explains your babbling about getting lost in the woods, being chased by monsters, and finding Frankenstein's Castle, complete with his monster. Which is why you couldn't properly be questioned about what happened that night. It makes perfect sense."

The one leech had given up trying to crawl down her leg, and rejoined the others while the one in her sleeve remained where it was. Progress was progress. She was in control, mostly.

Of the leeches at least. The situation itself was spiraling out of control.

"I guess," she said quietly, trying to remain focused on the leeches, rather than what she was agreeing to.

"You can go home then," a pause to drink from the flask again, "Get some rest and come back to me immediately, if you manage to recuperate enough to have a more coherent recollection of what exactly happened."

She nodded.

The leech squirmed against her hand.

She wondered what would happen if she took it out, put it on the desk and told the truth.

It was a risk she wasn't willing to take, not yet when she didn't know Irons' motivation. There was no reason for her to assume the worst, but if she was wrong…

Unaware of her inner turmoil, or perhaps all too aware of it, the police chief smiled at her, "It's late, do you need a ride?"

Even if he hadn't been drinking, after what had happened, there was no way she'd take him up on the offer. She didn't trust him, couldn't, not after all she'd been through. Ignoring signs that something was wrong and still going along with it, had been what had gotten her killed in the first place. It was a lesson learned too late, but better late than never she supposed.

"No, I'll be fine," keeping her hand over the leech, she stood pushed her chair away from the desk.

"I think you might have missed the last bus," he glanced pointedly at the clock, "Are you sure you don't want a ride?"

He was right, it was nearly midnight. The idea of going out alone that late would have frightened her, should have, but after what she'd been through, mundane fears really weren't something to worry about. Besides, thanks to the leeches, her sleep schedule was pretty much inverted anyway. If she ever wanted to spend any length of time outside again, she'd have to get used to going out at night.

Then, there was the Chief himself.

His eyes were as blank and glassy as any of the taxidermy animals he'd decorated his office with. It wasn't just that he'd been drinking either. She'd seen that look before, when she'd asked Billy where he was going when he started walking away from her.

"I'll be fine," she repeated, slowly backing away.

When she reached the door and Irons still hadn't gotten up, she turned around and started down the hall. After about ten steps, she broke into a run and didn't stop until she was out of the station.

There was a payphone right across the street, but she kept walking for several blocks, looking back over her shoulder, expecting that she'd be followed.

She wasn't, and when she arrived at the well-lit area around an all-night diner, she allowed herself to relax slightly. She might have been imagining things earlier, but if she hadn't… Heading straight to the payphone there, she called a cab and waited.

By the time the cab arrived, the leeches had calmed back down and she'd mostly convinced herself that she'd been overreacting.

She still had to figure out what Chief Irons' response to what had happened meant, but that was something that could wait until the next day. Right now, she had a lot to think about, specifically figuring out a way to do something about what had happened. She had to reveal the truth about Umbrella, something that was going to be much harder than she'd anticipated.


	6. Normal Things

**Notes:** Sorry, my schedule has been all over the place the past week. I'm going ot try to get back into a routine of updating, but I'm not making any promises.

o0o

After the meeting with Chief Irons her first thought had been to try and contact one of her fellow STARS members, but who? Barry was the natural choice, he'd given her his phone number after all, but she didn't want to get him involved in the particular mess she was in, especially not when he had his family to worry about. Chris or Jill were her other options, but she didn't want to go to them until she had something more to offer than simply being able to back up their story.

Given the state she was in, if she was found out it might work to discredit what they were saying, or act as the wrong sort of proof, depending on who found out and how. After all, if Chief Irons had been able to twist things so badly there was no telling what someone working for Umbrella could spin her situation into.

In the end she decided that it would be best to wait, at least until she figured things out a bit more because after she got back from her ill-fated meeting she realized that she had a great deal to figure out.

Leech-proofing the apartment hadn't worked. While she'd been out, they'd worked together to pull away the tape and get back into the walls. She'd had to carefully disentangle several from the strips of tape, and then work on luring the others out of the walls, a task that she quickly gave up on, because what was the point of it? Once she got them out she could re-tape everything, but it wouldn't do any good. They were smart enough to have figured out how to get around it once, and the moment she let her guard down they'd do it again.

She briefly wondered how Director Marcus had dealt with it, but almost immediately realized that he hadn't cared about controlling the leeches. He'd let them do as they pleased, not worrying about, or more likely encouraging, the horrific consequences that followed.

The one good thing that came of it all was, in her attempts to get them out of the walls, her awareness of where they were continued to improve. It was a case of getting better at figuring out what the feedback she got from them was, and interpreting it. The more leeches there were, the easier it was to tell what they were doing. The gathering of leeches in the bathtub was obvious, she could even sort of tell what they were doing, which at the time seemed to be clustering around the tap, trying to get it to turn back on. Her awareness of it was probably helped by the fact that there was a steady procession of leeches going to and from the bathroom, some rejoining with her and contributing vague impressions of what had happened. The ones in the kitchen, though a smaller, more diffuse group, were also fairly easy to pick up on. Mostly foraging behavior and a sensation of hunger.

Focusing on them made her more aware of the hunger. This lent credence to the idea that they had some sort of collective intelligence. Between that and how well they worked together, she made a decision.

She was going to make herself breakfast and figure out a way to eat it. For the past few days, she'd been managing by feeding them, which was easy and unnerving in equal parts. It wasn't something that she wanted to have to live with, and now seemed as good a time as any to do something about it. The communication between her and the leeches went two ways, so there had to be a way to do it. Besides, it would be good practice for what she'd have to do in the near future, namely going shopping and then figuring out how to deal with the Umbrella situation, figure out Chief Irons reasons for covering up what had happened and then, take things from there.

The discovery that the leeches had already started moving away from the stove, and gathering on the counter when she went into the kitchen was heartening, in addition to giving her something to think about. If she could figure out how they communicated she'd have an easier time of things, especially when it came to keeping them under control. She had no illusions about being able to train them, on their own they were nowhere near smart enough for that, but it presented the possibility that, at least when she was around, she could keep them out of trouble.

She took out the box of instant pancake mix, scooped out enough to make enough for herself, looked at the leeches gathered on the counters and table, and doubled the amount. In the time it took for her to get the water, one of them had already managed to get into the bowl of mix. Aware of its distress as it rolled in the dry, clinging powder, the others backed off.

Shaking her head, she picked the leech up, dropped it in the sink, and then added the water.

The ones on the counter climbed the bowl as she stirred the mix, gathering on the rim as though watching what she was doing. Maybe, they were. It was hard to make out any detail against their dark, mottled hide, but she was fairly sure that they had eyes. They had to be more than just photosensitive, considering how easy it was for them to find things in her apartment. Once the first few found their way, she could attribute the others following to pheromones and scent trails, but there had to be something guiding the initial leeches. So the real question was, how good their eyesight was, and it was one that she didn't plan on putting too much effort into finding out, because it went back to the question of how much of her was left, because if the leeches could see as well as a person…

Forcing that rather unpleasant thought from her mind, she turned on the stove, the leeches on the counter backing further away as soon as she put her hand on the knob. They knew what was about to happen, because, somehow, she was transmitting not only what she was doing, but the results of it to them, and they didn't like it at all. At the same time, the ones that made her didn't respond at all. It meant that with the leeches that made her, her own awareness overrode instinct and the impulse to follow it.

That implied that them taking over and forcing her to attack people, wasn't likely to actually happen. Just two leeches had tried something in the police station, impressive considering she had no idea how many there actually were, and that had been in response to her own fear and anxiety. If she kept things under control, she could control the leeches.

After all, she realized, pulling two more leeches out of the batter as she heated the pan, the ones making her weren't actively falling off in an effort to get food. It was the unattached ones, the ones that knew what she was doing due to proximity, but weren't directly under her control, that were getting into things.

It meant that she could leave the house, without worrying about what the ones that were a part of her doing anything as long as she was careful. If she kept her trips quick, she wouldn't have to worry about the ones in the apartment either, provided she could get enough of them in a group to try and instruct them. Quantity seemed to be the key. One leech alone was just a leech. A few of them would pass information to each other, but otherwise act more or less on their own. A whole group of them would work together and behave with some semblance of intelligence. Enough of them together and there was her.

On the counter, another leech was starting to climb the side of the bowl.

"No."

Before she even finished the single syllable, it dropped back to the counter.

Alone they listened, enough of them together, she might be able to train and it seemed that they preferred to be together when possible.

All that from deciding to make breakfast. Now, if she actually managed to eat what she cooked, it really would be a good day.

Once the pan was hot enough, she poured the batter in. While waiting for it to cook, she put the remaining batter in the fridge to keep the leeches out, and took out the bottle of syrup. One pancake would be enough for a start, and if she managed to eat it she could make more. If not, the leeches didn't have any problem eating the batter raw, because she wasn't going to cook for them if she didn't have to.

Once the pancake was done, she drowned it in syrup, because as a reasonable adult, living on her own she was allowed to put as much syrup on her pancakes as she wanted. And if she'd had any milk left, she glared at the leeches, she would have had a glass of Ovaltine.

Sitting down at the table, she cut off a small bite with her fork and tried to take a deep breath. She could actually feel the leeches in her chest moving to let her draw in more air.

She could do this.

It would work.

This time, she wasn't caught off-guard by it being flavorless, which helped.

Bracing herself, she prepared to swallow and –

Noticed that the leeches on the counter had managed to knock the bottle of syrup over onto its side, and were working together to wrap around it and squeeze. They'd already succeeded in getting a fairly good sized puddle onto the counter.

Stop that.

She wasn't able to get the words out around the mouthful of pancake, but the thought was enough. They slithered off the bottle and started lapping up the mess they'd made.

Back to eating.

She focused on swallowing, recalling that food was pushed down the esophagus by muscle movements, and trying to get the leeches to simulate it. Again, she could feel them moving, wriggling against each other as they worked together.

A second bite.

It went down easier this time.

By the third, the leeches had figured out what they were doing, and swallowing came easier, if not naturally.

Eating breakfast really wasn't that much of an accomplishment, but it was normal and she desperately needed normal.

She made herself two more pancakes, remembering to put the syrup away immediately afterwards, and left the remaining batter out for the leeches to finish.

Afterwards, she cleaned up, getting all of the leeches out of the sink so she could wash the dishes. As they did when she was cleaning, they watched nervously from a safe distance, not trusting the gloves she wore to keep her safe from the soap. It was interesting, there were enough of them around that she could actually feel their apprehension and realize that it was them, not her. However they worked, it was more complicated than she had the time to figure out.

Encouraged by all the normal things she'd accomplished so far, she set her mind to taking out the garbage before it started to smell. As much as the leeches had done to eat anything that would stink, she didn't want to take any chances. If the neighbors complained…

As she waited for the leeches to finish getting out of the trash, she made her plans for the day. A shopping trip for sure. She was low on groceries and she wanted to focus on things the leeches could eat on their own. That was, maybe, so they'd stop trying to eat what she made for herself and, more importantly, maybe if she left enough food around for them, they'd stop going into the walls to hunt mice. Fresh fruits and vegetables were a must, and since they were omnivores, maybe canned dogfood. That was something she could safely leave out for them, and was easier for her to cope with than buying meat for them. She really didn't want to think about them eating meat.

After shopping, she'd leave plenty of food out for the leeches and by that time, the library should be open. She'd go head there and spend the day in the microfilm room, looking for old articles on Umbrella. She already had a better knowledge than most of the public about the research that it did, that it made public thanks to her previous plans of getting a job there and everything she'd read had been legitimate and genuinely helpful. The thing was, if what had happened to Director Marcus was any indication of a trend, then there had to be other disgruntled employees. That sort of information wouldn't be in the scientific journals she'd read, but it might be in the local newspapers. She'd have to look into disappearances, lab accidents and possibly firings that made big enough waves to end up in the local papers. If she was lucky, she'd get names, maybe be able to get in touch with former employees and one of them would know something. Then, it was a matter of convincing them to share their story. Get enough people talking and Chief Irons, no matter what his motivation for it, wouldn't be able to keep it quiet.

She could do it, she could take Umbrella down.

By the time the last leech was out of the garbage bin, the sun was just coming up, perfect timing as far as she was concerned.

Tying off the garbage bag, she went downstairs and out the front door, and out into the early morning light.

Immediately, she realized a flaw in her plan. She'd been keeping most of the lights off in her apartment, the lighting in the police station had always been poor, and she'd mostly gotten used to the dark to the point where she didn't think about it too much. The leeches though, they didn't like the sun at all.

She could feel them moving, shifting in place as they tried to avoid the light.

It was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. She had a plan for the day and she was going to stick to it, no matter what. Long pants and a light jacket, though unseasonable, would keep them in the shade. Then, it was just a matter of keeping her hood up and her head down. Yes, she'd look strange, but that was better than being trapped in her apartment all day, and only being able to go out when it was dark. Her biggest concern would be being too hot, but that was a small price to pay for being able to go outside.

Heading back inside, she changed and tried again. It worked, it wasn't ideal, but it wasn't as bad as she'd expected. She'd forgotten that leeches were ectotherms, so she wasn't likely to overheat unless she stayed out for way too long.

It was yet another reminder of what had happened, but she wasn't going to let it stop her, not when she was finally about to get things done. It would be something for her to think about later though, before the weather started getting cold.

In the end, the most eventful part of her trip to the grocery store, had been the cashier trying to start a conversation with her about her dog. Because she was buying dogfood, so of course she must have had a dog.

Upon her return to her apartment, she was face with the problem of where exactly to feed the leeches. The kitchen was the obvious choice, but she wasn't sure if that would only encourage them to pester her while she prepared her own food. They were more intelligent in larger groups, so getting as many of them together at once as possible might help with getting them to behave.

The bathroom it was then, because if she could keep them mostly in one room that would make things easier all around.

The apples she'd bought were immediately swarmed, rolled across the floor as the leeches enthusiastically dug in. They were a little slower approaching the dogfood, likely because she had no associations with it and food, but once the first leech, at her encouragement, tried it, the others followed suit.

Satisfied that they'd at least be well fed while she was out, she attempted to command them to stay in the bathroom. There was some response from them, some inkling of feeling, but she had no idea if they understood or not. The only way to be sure, would be to leave and see what had happened when she got back.

Grabbing her library card and a thermos of water, because the last thing she needed was to end up dehydrated if she lost track of time, she headed back out.

Whatever happened next, at least she was making progress, getting closer to being able to do something.

The library wasn't too far from her apartment, farther than the store she'd done her grocery shopping at, but not far enough that planning things out around the bus schedule felt worthwhile, so she decided to walk. If the heat wasn't going to bother her, it would be a good test of what she could manage. As much as she wanted to figure out what to do about Umbrella, she understood that she'd also have to figure out her own capabilities, discover what she could do and what her limits were in controlled situations.

It wasn't that she expected things to go horribly wrong, but with everything else that had happened, it was easy to imagine that they might. She didn't know how, but the risk felt very real to her with how far in over her head she was with the situation. How far would Umbrella go to keep her and the others quiet? She didn't know and didn't want to find out.

The walk to the library was nothing, if not educational.

By the time she arrived, she'd drank all of her water and was desperately thirsty. The heat hadn't been a problem and her clothing had mostly shaded the leeches, but she'd never considered why they tried so hard to stay in the shade. Moisture loss through evaporation was the problem, one she'd need to figure out a way to solve. The slime that coated them had grown tacky, creating a protective membrane to help seal in water, but it pulled uncomfortably against their bodies, threatening to split every time she moved. It wasn't painful, not yet, but she could tell that if given enough time it would get there, like it had when…

She wasn't going to think about that, not when she had more pressing concerns, like how it had gotten hard for her to breathe. She'd known that her lungs, if they were still there, didn't work anymore, but breathing hadn't been a problem. The leeches had been taking care of it somehow, but between the slime and the hot, dry air, it had become increasingly difficult for them to manage.

Her initial plan had been to research Umbrella, but that would have to be put on hold, she decided as she staggered into the bathroom, refilled her thermos, drank the whole thing, refilled it and then drained it again.

She was going to need to find out what she could about leeches first, before what she didn't know managed to hurt her.


	7. Research and Connections

She'd started her research in the library, alternating between spending hours in the microfilm room, trying to figure out what it was that she was looking for to begin with, and wandering the main floor of the building, trying to find any books that she could that might have useful information on leeches. She hadn't been able to find that much, and resorted to going back to her apartment and making calls to people she'd known from college, professors and several entomologists specializing in annelids, in the hope that they might be able to sue the resources they had to find her better information.

She'd gotten letters from some of them, had phone conversations with others and managed to end up on fairly good terms with one of the entomologists, Professor Harry Rice, who was more than willing to answer her questions, even when they got strange. Talking to him was, for the most part pleasant, since he was the sort of professor she'd loved to get in college, one with a real passion for his work and a willingness to talk about the aspects they found fascinating. The one problem was that he had a tendency to ramble, and in the three conversations she'd had with him already, she'd gotten to hear a number of stories about the trouble he and his colleagues got into out in the field, and in the area around the university he was now teaching at. The incident where he and three friends nearly got into a fight with a bunch of bikers at a bar near where they had been collecting samples had been kind of amusing, the story of the misfortune one of those same friends had with a botfly was far less so.

Unfortunately, the approach she was taking meant that a lot of making calls and then waiting for people to call her back. Sitting on the sofa with the blinds drawn and the television on to provide, at least, some light and background noise, so she wouldn't feel quite so alone was hard, especially when she was surrounded by leeches. Today, at least she had something that made the waiting feel productive.

Professor Rice had promised to send her as many old journal articles on leeches as he could find, had come through in a big way. He'd sent her several boxes full of back issues of various scientific journals for her to read through. It was dry reading at best, but it helped her put things in perspective, made it possible for her to pretend that she was working on some assignment for a class in college, rather than killing time and waiting for phone calls to be returned and the weather to break.

She'd learned her lesson well enough, dry weather wasn't good for the leeches, it made them sluggish and uncomfortable, which in turn made things difficult for her. The humidity was too low out that day for her to even bother going to the library, so she was stuck in her apartment, trying to pass the time.

It was tempting to go and take a shower to try and get more comfortable, but she was trying to limit herself to two a day, one in the morning to wake up and one at night to relax, if standing in a bathroom where leeches were crawling on every surface could be considered relaxing.

What she really wanted, was a nice long soak in the bathtub, but she'd found more bones when she was making her bed the previous day.

Her leeches were growing fast. They hadn't gotten anywhere near as large as some of Marcus' had been, but the largest ones were close to two inches long when at their full extension.

She's added the new bones to her collection, hidden away in the closet. Eventually, she'd have to get rid of them or find a better hiding spot.

Sooner or later, the dry spell would pass and she'd be able to go out again, but until then, there was only so much she could do. Sitting around, reading and waiting for phone calls to be returned wasn't terribly interesting, but it was something.

That was what she had to keep telling herself, she was still doing something, even if it felt like nothing.

Reading through the papers she'd been sent helped her put some things in perspective, made the leeches seem a little bit less unnatural, which helped. She still didn't like them, but on some level, she was able to accept that she'd need to learn to live with them if she wanted to be able to accomplish anything. Fumbling through things wasn't going to work, not when there was the risk that eventually she'd make a mistake that would hurt her or someone else. It wasn't directly going to stop Umbrella, but it was still important.

So she kept reading, learning about leeches even though she didn't want to. At the start, she stuck with general information, but soon she started focusing on their senses, trying to determine if the awareness they showed of their surroundings was unusual or not.

She'd found that leeches did have eyes or similar sensory organs, which they used to locate prey, which explained how they were able to get around the apartment so well. She also learned that they seemed particularly sensitive to certain portions of the light spectrum, which explained why direct sunlight bothered them, but indoor lighting wasn't all that bad. They didn't particularly like it, but they could deal with it

The number and positioning of their eyes varied from species to species, which was useful to her. If she was able to figure out what kind of leeches they were, she'd be better able to keep them and herself comfortable.

Picking up one of the larger leeches, she began to examine its front end, counting pairs of eyes. It made things easier by rearing up, giving the impression that it was examining her as she examined it. Watching the little thing, trying to count eyes as it swayed made her dizzy, her eyes going in and out of focus as shadows moved back and forth across her field of vision, until she had to put it down and close her eyes.

She was fairly sure that she'd counted five pairs, which would hopefully come in handy when she got around to trying to identify them.

Shadows and flashes of color continued to waver before her eyes, looking almost like distorted images.

Her leeches could see and they could see more than just shadows. What they saw they could share with each other.

And her.

The leech had been watching her and what it was seeing had started to overlay with what she was seeing.

It was something that might come in handy at some point, if she could figure out how to put it to use.

Filing that idea away for later, she resumed her reading, picking an article that was more of an overview of the use of leeches as a model organism. She skimmed it, very little of it actually useful to her, since it was more about the use of leeches in research than anything else, but some of the articles it referenced might be of use. It was a fairly narrow field, meaning that the same names showed up again and again. She was familiar enough with most of them at this point, even called or sent letters to a few of them, just to test the waters and expand her network of contacts.

The only interesting part, was a few short paragraphs about how research was being done on group behavior in leeches, since the females of some species, to some extent, cared for their young, but it was generally considered that the only interactions leeches had with others of their own kind was that, mating and cannibalism. She'd wished that there was more, because her leeches certainly interacted with each other and if there was anyone studying that sort of thing, talking with them might prove useful, give her a better understanding of exactly how the leeches were passing information to each other, because if she could figure that out, she might be able to finally train them to stop going into the walls and hunting mice.

Not expecting much, she checked the references list from the article, to see exactly what the single paper cited in the bit about group behavior was.

The name, The Mechanics Behind Schooling and Group Behavior in Hirudo medicinalis, was expectedly bland yet descriptive, far more promising than she'd expected. As luck would have it, the names of two of the three researchers listed as authors were ones she didn't recognize.

The third was James Marcus.

It was listed as Marcus, J., because that was the format for that sort of thing, but it had to be. The date the article was written lined up, two unknown names and then Marcus. It had to be.

Marcus had done more than write notes about leeches, he'd published some of his research, before he'd started his experiments with Umbrella judging by the publishing date. It was possible that somewhere in his research there would be some clue, some hint of what he'd been working on, or at least with. Knowing what the leeches had started as would be a huge step forward, and enough for her to be done with her researching them.

There was even the possibility that if she were able to get in touch with someone who worked with him, she might find out something about Umbrella that she could use. He had to have talked with his coworkers, maybe voiced concerns to them about Umbrella if he'd kept in touch with them. If she could find a way to contact one of them, let them know that she knew what he'd been working on before he was murdered, she might be able to get something done. Marcus and his leeches might be what she needed for everything to fall into place.

She'd made progress in the most unexpected way, now she just had to figure out what to do about it, how to best follow through.

Turning off the television, she stood up and started to the apartment. First things first, she needed to feed the leeches. They were getting hungry again, which her research told her was strange. Normal leeches only needed to eat every month or so, but tended to eat until they couldn't move. Hers ate more frequently, and in smaller amounts, but they were also growing at an impossible rate. It had to be the Tyrant virus, she'd seen how large other creatures infected with it grew, so it made sense that the leeches were the same way. The difference in their feeding behavior also made some degree of sense considering that they were active predators.

Active trouble too. They'd managed to get into the cabinets, and were passing bits of cereal up to the sink to soak and soften enough for them to eat. Then again, there was worse trouble that they could be getting into so she left them alone. Better to let them stay busy than to open the cabinet and have cereal pour out all over the place, because she was sure that they'd gotten in and either tipped the box over or torn it apart, and she didn't feel like cleaning up after them. It wasn't like she had to worry about mice or bugs anyway, the leeches would see to that.

Grabbing a can of dog food, she poured it into a bowl and brought it into the bathroom.

The leeches in the tub moved as a wave, schooling together, climbing on top of each other and reaching up towards her. She knew what they wanted, not from any communication between them and her, but because it was obvious. They weren't going to get it though, there was no way she was going to feed them in the tub and let them make a bigger mess than they already were. Placing the bowl on the floor, she left before the leeches started to pour over the edge of the tub.

It seemed like there were more of them every day, and maybe there were, but not because there were actually more of them, another thing that she'd garnered from her research. They were still juveniles, nowhere near the point where they'd start reproducing, she'd have noticed if they were, because she was pretty sure that was the sort of thing that'd be hard to miss. What was happening, was that they were growing so fast that more and more of them, were free to roam the apartment as fewer and fewer were needed to make her. It presented an interesting dilemma, since she knew that it took a certain amount to make her herself, versus just a bunch of leeches. What would happen when the number that made her fell below that threshold? Marcus had managed, but he'd also been breeding the leeches for who knew how long. For all she knew, he was made up entirely of juveniles to keep maintain the numbers needed to make himself. Would she die? Would she turn into a mindless, shambling monster? Was there a difference?

All the more reason for her to make progress and fast. At the rate the leeches were growing, there was no telling how long she'd have.

Walking back to the kitchen, she decided to fix herself a meal as well. It was easier and less distracting than letting leeches trade places as they took turns eating.

During her last shopping trip, she'd gotten herself some TV dinners and she took one out of the freezer, put it in the microwave and went back to pacing.

She needed to find where the people Marcus had worked with were, and to do that, she'd need help. Going to the local university and doing what she could through the interlibrary loan system was one option, but that presented problems of its own, such as explaining why she needed to find a copy of that particular article, and as many others as could be found by the same researchers in the hope that one of them might contain some hint of where those scientists were now. In her experience, getting anything through interlibrary loan had been like pulling teeth due to the work it took. Since she wasn't a student or an actual researcher herself, there was an additional layer of difficulty to be overcome.

The microwave beeped, letting her know her meal was done. Looking at the neatly compartmentalized mess of chicken in cream sauce, buttered vegetables and seasoned rice she couldn't help wondering if the leeches might be the ones getting the better meal. It wasn't like she could taste any of it and the ones passing bits of cereal up into the sink certainly were enthusiastic about what they were up to.

It wasn't fair if they could taste what they ate and she couldn't, not with everything else they shared with her.

Maybe, she'd have to look into reading some articles about how leeches found what they ate, not because she was going to start eating what they did, but because it might help her figure out if they had a sense of taste or not, and what flavors she might be able to pick up.

Or she could stop procrastinating and get back to work.

Heading back to the living room, she made up her mind.

It was time for another call to Professor Rice, who, thanks to his botfly story, made her think of maggots. And his name was rice, which just happened to look like a plate of maggots. All of it, combined with her reason for calling him, worked to give her a very unpleasant mental image. Shuddering, she put the TV dinner down on the floor by the sofa for the leeches to finish. It wasn't like she could taste it anyway.

She'd been wanting to call him for a number of reasons, but had been putting it off, then just minutes ago, she'd discovered something that gave her very good reason to stop procrastinating.

As the leeches began to finish her lunch for her, she dialed his number and waited.

The phone rang, and rang, and just when she was about to give up, the professor answered.

"Hello, sorry, I just got in the door, Harry Rice speaking."

Rebecca couldn't help but smile at his greeting. If not for his area of expertise, she had the feeling she probably would have liked attending one of his classes.

"Hi, Professor, it's Rebecca Chambers again, I was just wondering –"

"Oh," he cut her off, "I still haven't found where I put that term paper you sent me. Like I said before, it was excellent and as soon as I find it I'll get it back to you. Wait, no, I'm sorry again, you said Rebecca, not Ronda, didn't you?"

"That's right. I'm sorry if you're busy, I can always call you back later if you'd like," her smile faltered as she began having second thoughts, wondering if she even wanted to even know the answer to the question she was about to ask.

"Oh no, I was out to lunch. I've got plenty of time. You're calling about your leeches, aren't you?"

Her leeches.

She supposed they were.

Bracing herself, Rebecca began, "That one journal you sent me, the really old one with the article…" she trailed off, double checking the title, "Leeches as a Model Organism in Neurological and Behavioral Research. It referenced an article I'd love to get my hands on. It was 'The Mechanics Behind Schooling and Group Behavior in Hirudo medicinalis'. I'd love to find out if the researchers who wrote it wrote anything similar, especially James Marcus."

"Interesting," Professor Rice spoke slowly. She could imagine that he was jotting down what she'd just said, "I remember you expressing an interest in that subject when you first called me, asking if I'd ever heard of eusocial leeches."

She was surprised that he'd remembered as much, but glad. It made things easier, since she was making things up as she went, "That's right. It got me thinking, that since Marcus worked near where I live that maybe the leeches I found are the same as the ones he studied. Maybe, he was working with them when he wrote one of his papers."

"You still think your leeches work together?" he sounded amused at the idea, "More than just females carrying their newly hatched young to prey?"

She watched as the leeches ate, passing food to each other. Her leeches, she tried the thought just to see how it made her feel. Not too great. There was no denying that they were working together though. If Professor Rice saw that, what they were capable of, even without context he'd be shocked, it was something that leeches simply didn't do, "Yes, I've watched them work together to protect…themselves and hunt."

Technically, they hadn't been protecting themselves or hunting with the zombies, but there was no doubt that they'd been working together.

"So, you've been watching them in the field, that's always fun, isn't it?" he laughed, "Did I ever tell you about the first and only time I managed to run a three minute mile? It was back when I was a grad student, collecting night crawlers for a lab. I was out in a cow pasture, or at least I thought it was a cow pasture. Turned out, it was where the farmer was keeping a bull. Son-of-a-gun nearly got me, the farmer, not the bull. I made it out of the field fine, but the farmer had heard all the commotion and came out of his house with a shotgun."

She could beat that story, easy, but she doubted that Professor Rice would believe any of it.

'Oh, you think your grad school days were wild, but let me tell you about what happened to me after I got out of college. Right away, I got picked up by an elite police team, secretly working for a huge biomedical conglomerate, not that I knew it at the time. Turns out, they were making living biological weapons. Sounds crazy, I know, but I ended up getting attacked by zombies, would have been killed if not for an escaped war criminal coming to my rescue. The two of us ended up getting chased by all sorts of monsters, until I managed to escape and meet up with another team, who was having just as much luck as I was. We got out alright, but not before having to fight Frankenstein's monster and would you believe that all this happened in a mansion, that according to the local police chief, is haunted? If you think that's crazy, you haven't heard anything yet. Do you want to know the real reason I'm so interested in leeches? It starts with this scientist who was murdered, but he came back for revenge…'

Instead, she managed a laugh that she hoped was polite rather than cynical, "I haven't had any adventures like that, but I've watched the leeches work together to take down much larger prey. It's not coincidence or parents and offspring either. They're same age siblings, actually working together like ants. I've also seen them cluster together, possibly for warmth."

"You're still young, you've got plenty of time for adventures," Professor Rice said kindly, "I'll see about doing what I can to find those papers for you. Until then, keep up what you're doing and maybe see about getting some pictures of those leeches of yours. You certainly do a good job of making them sound interesting, and I'm curious about what species they might be. I've got some theories of my own, but I don't want to jump to conclusions or discourage you, not when you're clearly having such a fun time studying them on your own. What school are you going to by the way? I can see about getting in touch with the biology department there to give you a hand when the semester starts."

"I already graduated," she sighed, wishing that she could take him up on his offer, but afraid of what would happen if he contacted anyone locally. If Umbrella was watching the police station, they were bound to be watching the university to scout for local talent. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself that way.

"Oh, you sound very young."

"I am," she watched as the leeches finished what was supposed to have been her meal.

Her leeches.

She still didn't like it.


	8. Decisions

Progress was slow, and worst case scenarios were starting to play out in her mind.

She'd had more luck finding out what she could about leeches than Umbrella, and her search for articles written by Marcus himself had been almost, unusually, fruitless. If they existed, and they had to because she'd seen them referenced, they were either old enough or obscure enough, that no one had a copy of any of them.

Even Professor Rice was puzzled by it, calling it a mystery because clearly they'd been published, otherwise they wouldn't be referenced, but he couldn't find any evidence of them existing. According to him, it looked like Marcus and the individuals he'd worked with, had all dropped off the map shortly after he'd started doing work exclusively for Umbrella. It was an interesting trend, but not that unusual, or so he'd said.

Rebecca thought it was plenty unusual, but she knew more about the situation than he did, not that she could say anything. Instead, she kept her conversations with him focused on the leeches, not wanting to lose him as a resource, even if there didn't seem to be much he could do for her, other than offer random facts on annelids and crazy, but utterly believable, tales of the misadventures he'd gone on.

Still, she knew more about leeches than she had to begin with, and was doing a better job of keeping them happy and herself comfortable.

She'd learned that the leeches were probably some species of medicinal leech judging by coloration, eyes and what she assumed Marcus had been working with, or at least they had been originally. Whatever Marcus had done with them, had changed them drastically. They were far too large, much more aggressive and reactive, not to mention the metachrosis was unique to them. In all her research she was unable to find any information about leeches capable of camouflaging themselves that way, and she'd stopped short of asking Professor Rice about it, because it was just too unbelievable, especially if he asked her for details about what they were mimicking.

She'd kept talking to him about the leeches though, her leeches as he affectionately called them. He doubted that she'd discovered a new species of leech, but was open to the idea that she might have discovered a region specific variant and was eager to know more, encouraging what he assumed was a hobbyist's interest.

Thanks to him, she actually knew something about them, had a better sense of just how strange Marcus' leeches were.

Knowing about them was part of a backup plan she was putting together, just in case nothing else worked. She'd figure out a way to safely send Professor Rice a specimen and somehow arrange for him to incidentally discover the Tyrant virus. That was sure to bring attention to the area, and eventually to Umbrella, especially if, once things got underway, she could figure out a way to bring up that they might have been the decedents of the leeches that Marcus had been working with before he vanished, having somehow escaped and started breeding in the wild, because she hadn't given up on that angle of things. Professor Rice thought that the man was her role model, that she was inspired by his having worked near where she lived.

And maybe she'd encouraged that line of thinking, calling Marcus' disappearance yet another local mystery when she was talking to him.

She'd gone as far as getting a disposable camera to take picture of the leeches as proof if it came to that. She hadn't taken any pictures yet, mostly because she was afraid. Not of someone recognizing the leeches, but of getting too immediate a response and ending up being asked to send a leech for study. She'd need to kill the leech first, shipping it alive would be too dangerous. If it got out at any point, there was no telling what it might do and if whoever she sent it to wasn't careful they'd be in danger.

So, killing it first was the only safe option.

Except, that would mean killing something making her.

There were enough leeches that she had extras, but the thought of it made her skin crawl.

After all she'd been through, she didn't want to lose any part of what made her.

The thought was purely her own too, because she'd seen firsthand that the leeches didn't care. She'd watched them eat their own dead, the ones that she'd accidentally killed during her first cleaning efforts. So she'd already killed some of them, by accident, but they had no way of knowing that.

Killing one or two of them wouldn't do her any harm, but it got her thinking about what would happen to her if enough of the leeches died.

It was something for her to worry about later, after dealing with Umbrella. That was how she'd taken to prioritizing things, everything could wait until after Umbrella. Still, learning what she could about leeches to help make sure they stayed alive wouldn't hurt her. Like how she'd learned that they breathed through their skin, which was why letting them start to dry out had caused her so much discomfort.

Once she knew enough to feel confident that she wouldn't accidentally hurt herself, she'd resumed her research at the library, trying to find out what she could about Umbrella, figure out a way to start working against them.

She'd spent hours in the microfilm room, which wasn't as bad as it should have been. Hardly anyone else came in there, and the room was dark enough that the leeches found it comfortable. As long as she remembered to stop and refill her thermos of water regularly, it was a pleasant enough way to spend the day, better that sitting around her apartment waiting for phone calls and watching the leeches crawl around.

In the beginning, she'd gone with what little she had, focusing on the Umbrella itself, which proved more challenging than expected. With nothing else to go on, the history of the global pharmaceutical giant had been a natural choice and presented the problem of there being too much information. Umbrella was an enormous company, involved in pretty much every major medical field, funding all sorts of research and grants, producing several common prescription and over the counter drugs, with at least two dozen new ones in testing, hosting events and contributing to numerous charities, meaning that filtering the information was the real problem. And all that was before taking into account all of fields outside of medicine that Umbrella was involved in, ranging from cosmetics to industrial cleaners, and everything in between.

If she'd been able to get help, it wouldn't have been such a problem. She'd been good at group work and delegation of tasks in college, and if she'd had a team of five or more people, she'd have been able to assign each of them a different aspect of the company to look into to see if they turned anything up, but since it was just her, the amount of information she had to wade through, filtering out what was useful from everything else, the task was daunting, especially when she didn't even know what she was looking for.

The only logical choice had been to start at the beginning, with the founding of the company.

Oswell E. Spencer, a British eccentric who was famous and infamous in equal measure, had founded it, along with two friends from college, Edward Ashford and James Marcus, that much was common knowledge, but reading about it helped put things in perspective. Of the three, Marcus was the only real scientist, the other two had technically gotten doctorates, but they'd been dabblers, pursuing the trends of the times and generally following whatever caught their attention, with no obvious goal in mind. The company hadn't started with an idea or any particular breakthrough, it was a pet project of Spencer and Ashford, one that began after a trip to Africa. They'd found something there, something that justified a massive expenditure of resources, both monetary and intellectual. She'd pursued that for a time, looking into when and where Umbrella had chosen to build facilities, what sort of talent it had managed to pull in to work at them.

The African facility, which should have been the most promising, since that was where things should have started, based on the timeline of events, was paradoxically the least productive, a sink of time and money. Funds went in, but nothing substantial ever came out, at least nothing that justified its continued existence. There was the occasional new organic compound discovered, ones that were potentially medically useful, but the facility seemed largely defunct.

If she'd been an accountant, with access to the relevant numbers and figures, she was sure that the situation would have set off all sorts of alarms, but as it was, she had nothing and it all meant nothing to her. Africa was where it started, but it was a dead end.

She tried looking at the medical research Umbrella was involved in, but it was too much, too many mundane drugs and harmless supplements. The most frightening things she found was the use of Red No. 3 in children's chewable vitamins, and research involving transgenic 'fish tomatoes', both of which were more scare mongering than anything else. Occasionally, the specter of Spencer's supposed fascination with eugenics would rise up to dog the company, but those claims were largely unsubstantiated, or attributed to youthful follies. Marcus on the other hand, had been regarded as a divisive man, loved and loathed in equal measure, depending on which of his colleagues was asked about him. As for Ashford, little was said about him as a business man or scientist, but the papers loved him. Right up until his untimely death, there had been articles about him, calling him a 'real life Gatsby' and offering nothing of substance on the man.

Of them, Spencer was the only one still alive, keeping mostly to himself and having only limited involvement in the company he had helped found. Ashford had been the first to die, early on in the company's history. The circumstances were mysterious and vague, another dead end. Marcus, she knew about all too well, and was once again a dead end. He wasn't even officially dead, he'd just disappeared one day and was a missing persons' case that remained open.

Umbrella had its share of missing researchers and accidents resulting in the death of employees, but the ones that got the most media attention were the least useful to her, because of all the things Umbrella was involved in, ranging from agriculture to cosmetics. The accidental death of a janitor in a plant where cosmetics were produced was useless, and the majority of reported deaths were exactly like that, mundane accidents.

Looking into missing persons wasn't much help either. There were plenty of them right in Raccoon City, but no more so than would be expected in a city of its size. The most noteworthy case, famous for spawning local urban legends, was that of the Trevor family. George Trevor had been a fairly renowned architect, well known for drawing inspiration for his designs from the Winchester Mystery House, and had disappeared, along with his wife and teenage daughter, while overseeing the construction of the Spencer Mansion.

She'd looked into the Mystery House, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, due to her experience in the Spencer Mansion, and what she found explained a lot. It also explained why the story of the Trevor family made for such a good ghost story. An architect with an interest in a mansion built to ward off ghosts, vanished during the construction of a similar house. The story was practically ready-made.

It was something she'd wished that she'd known about before her meeting with Chief Irons. If she had, she might not have fallen so easily into the trap he'd set for her.

It looked more, and more like she was going to have to focus on the leeches, and in desperation, she went back to the different projects the company was involved in, this time focusing on the more purely academic ones. The research in transgenic organisms had the most promise, more so than virology, since so much of that was easily linked back into the company's legitimate medical research. Of course, a company with an African branch would be interested in Ebola, the most feared and infamous virus of modern times. It was good publicity to say that a vaccine was being looked into, and again, it tied in with funds being sent to the mysterious African branch, which like a zombie, refused to die.

Transgenics was a newer field with quite a few practical immediate applications, and that was where Umbrella was investing a lot of money and pulling in a great deal of talent, almost a disproportionate amount, but not being an accountant, she couldn't really judge. It did line up with Marcus' leeches, the Tyrant virus and the other things she'd encountered, so she jotted down some names, took notes on different projects and started looking into those.

It was there that the real progress began. There were some names that showed up frequently, only to vanish from the news right when they were on the verge of some major breakthrough. A few phone calls to people she knew from college who had access to the relevant databases, and she was able to confirm that they stopped publishing articles about their findings at the same time they vanished from the public eye. It was just like with Marcus, proving nothing other than that Umbrella liked to control what its employees released to the public. There was no proof that any of them were dead, to the contrary, it was obvious that several of them were still alive and working for the company, but for all intents and purposes, they were no longer involved in research.

Researchers got transferred at the strangest times, some ending up in the seemingly defunct Africa facility, others ending up even more bizarre locations. Umbrella had an Antarctic research base of all things, supposedly for climate research, but it ended up with a surprisingly large number of virologists and geneticists.

So there was evidence that Umbrella was up to something shady, it was just that it required someone to either already know what was going on, or to make an impossible leap of logic. Not the best situation, but it was still useful, especially if she could figure out a way to help people make that leap of logic.

With that in mind, she started letting information slip in her phone conversations with acquaintances from college, hinting that she was looking into Umbrella, because she'd been offered a job with the company, but something about it sounded too good to be true, and she was trying to figure things out before saying yes. Too many researchers with the company seemed to fall off the map, she'd told them, and she didn't want that to happen to her, she wanted to be sure that she'd get into a project that would actually go somewhere.

And it worked, some of them actually started to notice things, seeing trends that didn't quite line up.

The problem was, it was too slow to accomplish anything, and just telling them the truth was impossible. Chief Irons had driven home how outlandish the story sounded, and without an understanding of why Umbrella was doing what it was doing, there was no way for her to make a convincing argument.

Umbrella was making monsters, but why? There had to be a reason behind it, some end goal.

Spencer had dabbled in eugenics, she was sure of it.

Wesker wanted a weapon.

Marcus had been content to make monsters.

Ashford, the company's charismatic face, had died of unknown causes.

And somehow all of it was connected, she was sure of it.

There was some missing piece, something big and obvious that she couldn't see from where she was looking, something that could bring it all tumbling down. It was something that only someone in the company would understand.

That was what she needed, an inside source and Umbrella certainly employed enough people. She just needed to figure out which one of them would be safe for her to go to. Someone who knew enough to be helpful, but wasn't so deeply involved that they had reason not to go public, to the contrary she needed to find someone who had reasons to admit what was going on, but hadn't. If she could find them and give them a little push in the right direction, everything else would fall into place.

The only problem was finding this person, if they existed, and getting in touch with them.

Then there was the breakthrough that happened purely by chance, looking over her list of names, one jumped out at her, Birkin. The article had nothing to do with Umbrella, just a little snippet in the local events section of one of the local papers. 'Congratulations and best wishes to the newlyweds, William and Annette Birkin' and it went on to talk about how the two had met, while working for Umbrella. It was cute, made the company look good and gave Rebecca exactly what she'd been looking for.

Marcus had mentioned someone named William Birkin having been involved in his death, and the dates lined up well enough that it worked. If one or both of the Birkins was still around, then it would be perfect.

Leaving the microfilm room and going down to the payphones to check the phonebook, she found it, both Annette and William Birkin were listed. A pair of Umbrella researchers right under her nose, involved in who knew what.

Her intent had been to call Barry, to let him know so he could tell the others, but instead she found herself calling the Birkin residence. She didn't know why, maybe to warn Annette that her husband was a murderer, and that the man he'd killed was out for revenge.

She imagined Annette as a fearful, concerned wife, worried about what her husband was involved in, while she herself worked a far more mundane job with the company, in one of its legitimate fields. In her mind, Annette worried about her husband, and maybe the one conversation would be all it took to convince her to confront him, and seeing her so upset would move him to confess everything for her sake.

It was a nice little story to imagine, but would it really play out that way? She could always hang up, go to Barry and tell him what she'd found, let him take care of things for her.

The phone rang twice, nowhere near long enough for her to figure out what to do, why she was even calling.

"Hi! You're early!"

The cheerful voice on the other end caught her off guard.

It was a little girl.

"I…" Rebecca stopped dead. She'd never imagined that they might have a child. All the more reason for one, or both of them to act, "Is your mommy or daddy –"

"They're at work," the little girl interrupted, sounding impatient.

"Do you know when they're getting home?" Rebecca asked, wondering if she should leave a message and her number. According to Director Marcus, William Birkin was a murderer, or at least an accomplice to murder. What would happen if she gave him her phone number? Would that put her in danger? But he was married, had a little girl, that didn't line up with her image of a man like that. Murderers didn't have families, except apparently they did.

"No, I don't," the girl's answer interrupted her train of thought, "And I'm expecting a very important call, so I don't have time to talk."

A little girl expecting an important call? If her life hadn't already been so surreal at this point, she would have burst out laughing, "An important call?"

"Yes, a very important call," was the utterly serious reply, "Daddy's going to call me when he gets a break. We're reading The Phantom Tollbooth together."

"Oh."

Rebecca hung up the phone.

It was the wrong number, it had to be, because even if it was her most promising lead, it was one she wasn't going to follow through on.

Because, she didn't want to imagine that there was someone working for Umbrella, who was both a murderer and a father, who would sneak time at work to make a phone call to read a book to his little girl, or let his little girl read to him. Rebecca wasn't sure which and didn't want to let her imagination start filling in possibilities.

She'd spent too much time imagining things already. It was time for her to face the facts, and work with what she had.


	9. Into the Woods

She had a plan, not the best plan, but she was still going to go with it. The temptation to sit and procrastinate, trying to come up with a perfect plan and get nothing done was too strong. Far better than to act on one that was good enough, than not do anything at all.

What she needed was proof, and if she wasn't going to find anything by researching the company, she'd have to take a more direct approach. The Spencer Mansion was in ruins and, more likely than not, so was the training facility, but there was no way that everything was gone. Something remained, if not any papers and files, physical evidence of the monsters that Umbrella was making. She had a disposable camera so all she had to do was go there, take pictures of what she found, and go to the press with them. If she was really lucky, she'd find a dead monster and be able to bring part of it back, irrevocable proof of what had happened.

So she worked on her plan, smoothing out little details and checking to make sure she knew what she was doing. A dozen times over she'd looked over the bus schedules and routes, trying to figure out which would bring her closest to the mansion. There were three stops roughly the same distance away, a few miles apart from each other, but with all of them, she was still looking at close to an eight mile walk to the mansion down a series of twisting backroads. She'd memorized the names of all of them, knew exactly which turns to take and where, but it was one thing to read it on a map and another to actually walk it out, especially if the weather was nice. Walking for miles in the sun with no access to water, other than what she could carry, would be an ordeal. Getting a backpack and carrying a few spare gallons of water with her was an option, but how much would the weight slow her down? She'd have to find a balance between how much she could carry, and how much the extra weight would slow her, and she didn't have time for that.

There was a way to cut her walk nearly in half though, get off at a different stop, walk two miles down the highway, and then cut into the woods. If she could keep going in a straight line, it was just about two more miles to get to the mansion. That was something she could do, and the trees would block the light enough that she probably wouldn't have to worry about the leeches getting dehydrated too quickly. If she started first thing in the morning, timed everything right and didn't spend too long at the mansion, she'd be done with plenty of time to spare. The hardest part would be waiting, however long it took for the bus to show up at the stop when she was done with it all.

It was a good plan, not perfect, but it was a plan that would work.

Never mind the crazy stories that there'd been in the local papers lately, the cannibal murders and similar horrible things, she knew the real reason behind it, someone ending up infected with the Tyrant virus, either from Marcus' leeches or some other source. She'd checked the name of the reporter who'd been following the story, knew the paper he worked for, and planned on going to him with her story, once she had pictures. It was still a crazy story, but with pictures they'd have to believe her, and if they asked why she hadn't gone to the police, she'd explain all that too. There was no way Umbrella would be able to defend itself from that, being linked to an absolutely horrific set of murders and after that, everything else would come out into the open.

She wouldn't let herself worry that there was nothing left, because it was obvious to her that there was something. They'd called off the cleanup effort at the mansion, unsafe conditions being cited, but she was sure of the real reason, that something remained, perhaps the entirety of the basement level lab and all the computers and specimens in it were still there. Just to be on the safe side, she went to an electronics store and bought a whole box of floppy disks so she could copy any information she found if, somehow, there was still power and she was able to get one of the computers running.

A few days of prep work and she was ready, what she was doing even looked natural, easy to explain on the off chance someone noticed her and asked what she was doing. She had her camera, her backpack with some spare water and sandwiches too, in case she got hungry, a compass and even an old set of binoculars, to properly check things out before getting too close to the mansion. The last thing she wanted was to get attacked by something. Zombies, if there were any left, wouldn't be a problem, but other things might have survived, monsters that would attack her.

Anyone who saw her would just assume that she was an ordinary hiker, out for a relaxing day of wandering through the woods.

She'd considered calling Barry, or Jill, or Chris, but decided against it. She figured that they all had their own plans that they were carrying out, and she didn't want to pull them away from what they were doing to help out, besides, she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to handle things and if something went wrong, it would be easier for her to abandon her plan if she was alone. Explaining to someone else would mean that she might end up having to explain the leeches, and she wasn't ready for that.

She didn't want to have to explain that she was a monster herself, because that was what it came down to when she was willing to face the truth and stop pretending otherwise. Three weeks was enough for her to, if not accept that, at least give consideration to what it meant.

She was dead, a monster, something utterly inhuman and she was the only one who knew. It was easily the most isolated she'd ever felt. Being the youngest in her classes at college had been nothing compared to this. Even the fear and embarrassment she'd endured as the youngest, and least qualified, member of S.T.A.R.S. had been bearable, even if there had been nights when she went home and cried. This was different, there was no getting over being dead, no telling herself that things would change, because if they did change, it would only be for the worse. All she had left was dread, and that wasn't something she wanted to live with, hence her obsession with doing something, even if she had to manage it on her own.

Which was terrifying, but not as terrifying as trying to explain to someone what had happened to her, how she'd died, because it wasn't really that cut and dried. She was dead, the leeches had replaced her, but somehow she was still herself and that was the problem

Being an actual monster wouldn't have been this bad. All the ones she'd encountered had been mindless things, barely even possessing an animal level of awareness. If that had happened to her, there wouldn't be enough left to worry. And even if there had been something left, even if she had remained aware the same as she was now, she'd at least have had reason to seek out help. People would be able to see that there was something wrong. Billy would have seen it, which wouldn't have mattered since he'd abandoned her anyway, but Chris Redfield would have believed her. That would have made all the difference in the world.

If there'd been something obviously dangerous about her, something that made her blatantly inhuman, the decision would have been taken out of her hands and everything would have been easy. With the leeches, she had to weigh the risks of being found out against the benefits of seeking help.

The risks were countless, especially with Umbrella out there, employing a good ten percent of the population in one way or another. Word might get back to them about her unique condition, someone might put two and two together and best case scenario, she'd end up working for them whether she wanted to or not, worst case was that she ended up just another experiment and somehow, indirectly, she'd end up hurting people. She might not have been dangerous, but Marcus had proven that the leeches could be.

There was nothing she could do, except try and handle things on her own.

Besides, it would be a way of making sure that she and the others hadn't died in vain. Taking down Umbrella wouldn't fix any of that, but it would prevent anyone else from dying, and that had to count for something.

And beneath it all there was another reason, a purely selfish one, she was enough of an adult to admit to. There was the faint, and likely futile, hope that if she were to succeed, if she were the one to take down Umbrella, then she'd be a hero and since getting rid of the leeches wasn't an option, maybe people would be willing to look the other way, because of all the good she'd done. It wouldn't be a normal life, not by any stretch, but in time she might find a way to adjust to the leeches and figure out a way to make it so things weren't so bad.

And that was why, after taking an extra long shower and making sure the leeches had plenty of food, she set out to the bus stop and rode across the city.

o0o

She'd been right, no one had paid any attention to her on the bus, and for the entire two mile walk along the road, no one even slowed down to ask what she was doing. It was funny how it worked out that way, the part that had worried her the most turning out to be so easy.

Now that she'd reached the point where she had to leave the road and go into the woods, she was frightened and not for any rational reason. There was nothing for her to be afraid of, not in broad daylight, and not when the leeches meant that she was safe from zombies. This time she was prepared, she knew what she was getting into, besides, if she encountered anything too bad, all she had to do was take pictures of it and hurry to safety. It would be the proof she needed, and after that everything would take care of itself.

In the end, it was the leeches that got her to act. As she stood there, fighting her fear of the unknown, she could feel them shifting and rolling over, making their displeasure at waiting out in the sunlight known. They hadn't liked the walk, but she'd been able to ignore them, now that she was just standing and waiting it wasn't so easy.

Taking a deep breath and feeling the leeches squirm in protest at her pointless action, she stepped into the woods.

Less than twenty feet in and she could already feel a difference. It was shaded, cooler and noticeably easier for the leeches to breathe. She could actually feel them starting to relax. They'd been relaxed in her apartment, because it smelled like her and they'd picked up from her that it was her home. Here in the woods it was different, on some more instinctual level they were at ease. How aware they were was disconcerting.

Half an hour later, she realized that there was a flaw in her plan. Going through the woods might still technically make things easier, but it wouldn't necessarily shave that much time off her trip. Her initial assumption that half the distance would take half the time, left out little details like the fact that she was making her way over uneven ground, there were no trails and using a compass to navigate wasn't as easy as she'd thought from the books she'd read at the library. Constantly having to check that she was going in the right direction, and then reorient herself any time, she had to go around an obstacle or force her way through dense undergrowth made for slow going. She wasn't lost, so there was that, but she wasn't going to turn around and go back just yet, not when she'd spent so much time convincing herself that she could do this.

And she could do it, making it to the mansion and looking around wouldn't be that hard compared to what she'd already been through. She'd survived a helicopter crash, being chased through the woods by monsters, run into an honest to goodness war criminal, and escaped director Marcus and the monsters that he'd let out. After that, she'd made her way through the woods alone at night, wandered through a zombie infested mansion, killed a number of those zombies, and managed to meet up with the surviving members of Alpha Team.

When she looked at things that way, what she'd managed was actually kind of impressive, more than she'd ever imagined that she'd be able to do when she first joined S.T.A.R.S. If she thought of things that way, rather than focusing on how terribly wrong most of it had gone, walking through the woods during the day wasn't all that bad.

Besides, there was no telling how much of it all she might have avoided if she'd been more proactive from the start.

She might not have died in the first place.

Checking her compass once again, just to be sure, she made her way deeper into the woods.

The mansion was bound to have what she needed, but if not, there was always the training facility and it would be easier to get there. All she'd have to do was follow the railroad tracks.

And now she was second guessing herself, wondering if she should have tried the training facility first.

No, there wasn't time for that not when –

She stopped, listening and trying to figure out what it was that she was hearing.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

So why was she so nervous, what had changed?

The light levels were the same.

The leeches weren't upset.

Nothing was moving nearby.

There were no out of place sounds, no howling or moaning, indicating that zombies or other monsters were in the area, so what was wrong?

Overhead, cicadas buzzed loudly. She'd always called them heat bugs when she was little, because they only seemed to come out during the hottest days of August.

Just to be safe, she took her thermos out of her backpack and took a drink.

Earlier she'd passed a stream, so if she needed more water there wouldn't be a problem. She was past worrying about things like clean water, not when the leeches were constantly in the trash, crawling around catching mice in the walls and crawling all over everything. Whatever might have been in the water, it was nothing that would be any danger to her.

Nearby, a small black and white bird flapped noisily and settled on a branch, no more than ten feet from her.

It made an awful lot of noise for such a little thing, as it hopped back and forth several times before finally breaking out into a repetitive two note call.

Somewhere not too far away, another bird answered with the same call.

In the distance, something let out a burbling series of sounds and was answered by a noise, halfway between a squeaky door and a meow.

Listening carefully, she put her thermos away and started walking again.

This time, she heard it when it happened.

Sudden silence.

Not total silence, the cicadas were still buzzing incessantly, but the birds had stopped.

Something had made them fall silent, and it wasn't her. Slowing down, she got her camera out and ready. There was no reason to suspect that it would be anything useful, but she had the feeling that it was something.

What sounded like a whole family of crows cawed and jeered before taking flight.

It took her some time to figure out where they were, and by that point, they'd already passed overhead, but assuming that they'd been moving in a straight line, she knew the direction they'd come from. A quick check of her compass and she adjusted her course.

Caught up in the moment, she was too excited to be frightened, using the sounds of the forest to track something, like one of the heroes in the old adventure stories she'd been obsessed with one summer back in middle school. Until now, she'd forgotten about that year, endless hours pretending that the line of trees and brush behind the house was a huge forest like the one she was in now. Somehow remembering that was reassuring, proof that there was more to her than the leeches. Because every little bit helped, every little thing that she could think of that was unique to who she was made things easier.

If it turned out to be a zombie, she'd deal with it, take plenty of pictures, and then go tell people what she'd found, not the police, but the newspapers and bring a reporter to see firsthand. Which meant that she'd have to take pictures of it before she killed it, prove that it had been up and walking, and that she wasn't just a hiker that had stumbled across a long dead body.

She had a plan, she could do this.

No birds, not even cicadas. She had to be getting close.

"Hey! You there! What are you doing?"

She froze, camera held ready as three men in green fatigues came into view in front of her.

"I'm…just hiking?" she swallowed back fear, though there was no reason for her to be afraid. No reason to assume the worst. It might have been hunting season. She couldn't remember for sure, but she was fairly sure that it started around this time of year. They might even have been hikers, in which case she should probably warn them to stay clear of the area.

No, they had to be hunters, one of them had a gun.

A rifle, she mentally corrected herself, a very serious looking rifle that she probably should have been able to identify, but firearms had never been her strong suit.

The men glared at her.

It was embarrassing that they'd been able to sneak up on her like that, when she thought that she'd been paying attention. They weren't even wearing camouflage, just green.

"You shouldn't be here," the one with the rifle warned.

She looked closer, little details sinking in. They all had rifles.

No, one of them had a shotgun, but not a normal one, or not what she thought of as a normal one with a long black barrel and wooden handle. This was something shorter and all black and gray, military looking or maybe like something one of her fellow S.T.A.R.S. members would have used.

They weren't S.T.A.R.S. though. She didn't recognize any of them, and they clearly didn't recognize her, and she'd been unfortunately well known in S.T.A.R.S. thanks to having managed to accomplish so many embarrassing mistakes in her short time as a member.

"Why not?" she tried to sound innocent, confused, which wasn't that hard.

There still wasn't any reason for her to assume the worst, none of them were actually pointing their weapons at her.

"Bad stuff's going down around here," the one with the shotgun spoke up with a smile, "Really nasty. You read the papers?"

"Yes," she did, but what did that have to do with anything. She'd read a lot of nasty stuff and been through worse.

Her grip on her camera tightened as she took a step to the side, trying to move so that there was a tree between her and them, just to be safe. In the process, she caught a glimpse of something unmistakable, a circle of red and white against the green of shotgun's sleeve.

The Umbrella logo.

Why had she assumed that S.T.A.R.S. had been unique?

They weren't zombies, but she'd found her proof.

Backing up a bit, to show that she was willing to leave she tried to snap several pictures, hoping that at least one of them would turn out okay and that her efforts would go unnoticed.

The one that had been silent so far tilted his head to the side and made some small gesture before raising his rifle.

The first that had spoken nodded, "Drop the camera."

"Why?" She tried backing away, only for shotgun to lift his weapon as well. That frightened her more than the rifle. She didn't know enough to identify the gun, but she knew the kind of damage that it could do, and that wasn't even taking into account the different kinds of slugs there were. A rifle could put a little or not so little hole in her, maybe kill a few of the leeches. A shotgun though…

That might do some serious damage.

The leeches shifted restlessly. They knew something was wrong, because she was afraid and she worried that they might try to scatter.

And now that she'd thought of the idea, it was a very real possibility. She didn't want to get hurt, they didn't want to die.

"No questions," he took a step forward, motioning for the other two to hold their fire, "Just give me the camera and you can go home. Don't worry about anything, you just let us do our job and everything'll be okay."

"You work for Umbrella," she blurted out before she could stop herself.

The man smiled, "Yes, we work for Umbrella. Just following up on what happened with S.T.A.R.S., you read about what happened to those guys? Is that why you're snooping around out here, playing Nancy Drew?"

"I…uh…never liked those books. Too formulaic."

She said the dumbest things when she was afraid, but somehow it worked to her advantage when all three of them laughed.

The tension eased ever so slightly with that, gave her a chance to think.

If she ran she'd be a moving target, if she zigzagged she'd be harder to hit, and the trees would give her some cover so she'd just have to worry about outrunning them. She had a pretty good idea of what her limits were thanks to joining S.T.A.R.S., but had they changed? What exactly had the leeches done to her in terms of physical abilities?

"Listen," he sighed and gestured for the other two to relax, "I really don't want to hurt you. I just want to get done with this section of woods, move on to the next and call it a day. Just drop the camera and let's go our separate ways, okay?"

She could tell he was telling the truth, that he honestly didn't want to shoot her.

Shotgun and the quiet one lowered their weapons.

"Okay, yeah, sorry," she let the camera drop, so it was hanging from her wrist by the rubber band that she'd put on it to use as a strap.

Then she took off running as fast as she could.

Gunshots split the air, branches fell and tatters of leaves fluttered around her.

The creek, she had to make it to the creek.

The brush was denser there, lots of fallen trees and reeds, plenty of places for her to hide.

Behind her, the men were shouting, hurrying through the woods, trying to catch up with her.

Her backpack caught on a low hanging branch, and she shrugged her way out of it.

Thin twigs slapped at her arms and face, snagging her jacket. Something impacted her back low down near the bottom of her ribs. There was pressure, but not much pain, just enough to upset the leeches. Alarm spread through them as they caught the scent of their own dead. She could feel them moving beneath her clothing, sliding against each other.

Stop it. She willed them to be still, to calm down, but they refused to listen.

Another impact, high up by her shoulder.

More leeches came loose, clinging to her, but not holding shape as they moved to eat the dead ones and figure out what had killed them.

The leeches were puzzled.

Shouting and cursing behind her.

She plowed through brambles.

That was good, she'd had to avoid them earlier, so she knew she was going the right way.

Thorns hooked into her jacket, and she had to thrash her way out of it to keep going.

She could deal with that. Covering her face with her arms she kept going, the leeches moving in such a way that the thorns slid harmlessly against her arms.

One advantage she had, one thing that she could be thankful for, was that she wasn't getting tired or out of breath.

The same couldn't be said for the men from Umbrella, and they also had to worry about the brush. She'd reached the point where it seemed that they couldn't line up a clean shot, though that didn't keep them from trying. Branches and leaves continued to fall around her, bits of bark splintering off trees as they continued trying to shoot her.

A little farther, the creek had to be somewhere around here.

Up ahead there was a line in the woods. She couldn't think of any other way of putting it. It was an area of dense brush and thinner gray trees. She made that her goal, because somehow she'd missed the creak.

Thirty feet.

The trees were different here.

Twenty feet.

No time to try and make sense of it.

Ten feet.

She was almost there.

Five feet.

One more step and –

She fell down the side of the ravine before she even had time to scream.

Tumbling head over heels, she fell fifteen feet down and splashed into the creek.

She hadn't realized that she'd been moving upwards, but it made sense. They were technically in the mountains.

Scrabbling to her hands and knees, she looked around, and spotting a fallen, but still living, tree she rushed for it, hoping to hide amidst the branches and leaves.

Hidden by the leaves, she pressed herself against the spongy ground, sinking deep into the thick layer of dead leaves that had been caught by the tree's branches.

At the top of the ravine, they were arguing. They knew she was down there, but none of them wanted to be the first to slide down and start looking.

Carefully, in an attempt to better hide herself, she tried to cover herself with handfuls of dead leaves.

The arguing stopped, she could hear rocks and leaves rolling down the slope as one of them slid down.

She tensed, wondering if she was going to have to run. It wasn't as though she'd tried to conceal her trail, make it harder for them to track her.

What had she been thinking, assuming that she'd be able to hide? She had no clue what she was doing, just like every other time she'd tried anything.

The leeches were still moving, seemingly unaware of the danger she was in, even though she was sure that she was broadcasting it to them as clearly as anything. More and more of them were coming loose, investigating the leaves she'd tossed over herself and the damp ground all around her. Of course they wouldn't worry, wouldn't understand, this was a fine place for them.

Something slid down the side of her face.

A leech.

It stretched out, tapping at the ground around it with its front end, then reared up to look at her.

They did that when they wanted attention.

A food seeking behavior modified into something new.

Her leeches wanted attention the same way a normal leech would want food.

Her leeches.

It watched her watching it.

Like before, her vision grew blurry as what it saw began to overlay with what she was seeing.

Movement.

The leaves were moving, the leeches were moving, nearby she could see the man's boots tromping steadily closer to her.

He was talking, shouting up to the others, but she couldn't quite hear him.

She had to run, but when she tried to push herself up off the ground, she found that she could hardly move her arms.

What was wrong with her?

She'd been shot, but that shouldn't have been a problem. She'd been shot before and gotten over it.

Had the leeches gotten it into their heads that their mimicry had to be accurate down to her passing out from blood loss? Because she could feel them sliding away, spreading out around her.

Why were they abandoning her, leaving her to die?

More leeches fell down her face, inching away from her.

She could hardly see, just light and movement and shadow, noise and vibrations.

Any moment she expected to pass out, lose what little awareness remained.

That never happened, instead the leeches continued to transmit information to her with their limited senses. Spread out as they were, it was over far larger an area than she'd expected and the amount of information, equal in all directions was hard for her to parse.

Another of the men had come down, while the first had started to move away from her. Except at the same time he was moving closer to other leeches, so it was more likely he was walking past her. Direction was hard to figure out, because different groups of leeches were aware of different things at different times. She had to rely on delay, but it was all happening at once and the leeches were sharing it with each other.

Shadows and noise and smell very close.

The leeches stopped moving.

Light.

One of the men was pushing the branches away.

He'd see her.

Noise, motion, but not the frantic burst of activity that she expected.

He reached out, directly above her. He was going to brush the leaves aside and find her.

So close, she could feel him.

Taste.

No! Don't bite him!

There was the movement she'd expected.

Sudden light, but the shadows returned as he let go of the leaves and fell back. She could actually feel the impact.

Also motion, frantic motion and air moving, light and air drying a small part of her out.

She focused on that part fear and…frustration at being in the light and away and unable to act.

Motion so close.

Closer and closer and –

Impact, pulling free and more motion and air and –

Impact again, against soft leaves.

Burrow down into the shadows and damp.

It took her a moment to realize what had happened, one of the leeches had crawled on to the man's hand and he'd first tried to shake it off before flicking it off himself. The leech was fine, it hadn't bitten him.

Light again, he was pushing the branches away.

This time more of the leeches moved, some, but not all of them.

Lots of noise and vibration.

They were looking right at her.

Why didn't they see her?

She hadn't done that good a job of hiding.

Something jabbed into the ground right in the middle of where she was.

It should have hit her, but there was nothing, she hardly even felt anything, just a few leeches being brushed aside, others holding together, clinging to her shirt.

The leeches were spread out too far for there to be anything solid. The ones on her shirt were covering it, keeping it hidden.

More talking, words she couldn't hear.

The man let go of the branches and in the shade the leeches relaxed slightly.

They were nervous, because she was nervous, but they also liked this area. It was, based on her research, the sort of place where you'd find normal leeches, so it made sense that they found it comfortable.

One of them had found…something and was eating it, calling the others over to join it.

Spread out the way she was, she discovered that she was hungry, or at least some parts of her were. Those were the bits at the edges of her awareness, exploring, looking for things to eat and finding them too. Information was spread across the network of leeches. Food here, light here, moving water here.

She had to keep them away from the water, because the last thing she needed was for them to get washed away from her. If they did she had no idea how she'd find them again and if enough of them washed away, she might not be able to recover. They got the idea, the creek wasn't like a shower or the bathtub, and they were careful to avoid it.

The men walked back and forth, looking for her and finding nothing.

Eventually, they vanished from her range of awareness, but she was afraid that they'd return.

She'd wait before leaving her hiding spot, in no small part due to the fact that she needed to figure out how to leave in the first place. She could move, she was moving just fine, just not in any way that was useful to her.

It was a matter of getting back before she got up. She had to get the leeches back together.

Once she'd gotten the idea, it spread throughout the group and they began to crawl back to where she was, or the majority of her at least.

After that, instinct guided them and they began to assemble. She could feel her thoughts and senses becoming clearer as more and more of them returned. Her hearing returned, allowing her to listen to birdsong and the rustle of leaves.

No sign of the men that she'd encountered, which was good.

The blur of swirling motion that had been the limit of her sight began to condense into actual shapes that slowly came into focus. The leeches were the first thing she noticed, not because they were particularly visible against the mud and dead leaves, but because of her shared awareness with them. In fact, when she looked closer, actually paying attention to shape and color rather than just leeches, she realized that the majority of them should have been invisible, having flattened themselves out and changed color to resemble dead leaves. It made sense, how well they mimicked things, the way that they had changed color to blend in with her skin, that they could camouflage themselves, but she hadn't considered the implications until now. They were indistinguishable from the leaf litter she was laying on, and by crawling on top of her clothing, they'd effectively hidden her from sight.

Useful, she decided as she sat up, but not something she ever wanted to have to rely on again, since it required the leeches to disperse.

Brushing the leaves and mud off her shirt, she felt something tumble down her back. Without thinking she reached behind herself and picked it up.

It was a short, gently curved length of bone, one of her floating ribs.

Terrified of what she was going to see, she lifted her shirt. There were places where the leeches had gotten back together, blended into normal looking skin, but they were few and far between. Most of her chest and stomach were a mass of squirming black shapes, carefully working their way back into position, blending in and expanding the edges of smooth, pink skin. Those areas felt normal to the touch, but everywhere else was a nearly fluid mass of leeches that rippled and flowed beneath her fingers.

Gingerly, she ran her hands over her chest, finding places where her fingers sank in until she could feel bone. Poking and prodding, she was able to find where the rib was supposed to be, and for lack of any better idea, pressed it against her side.

The leeches parted and then wrapped around it, pulling the bone into place.

Sensing her distress, the leeches were returning faster now, rebuilding her until they'd all vanished from sight.

Once again, she was unable to see or feel them.

She sat in the shade for a long while, legs against her chest, arms wrapped around them. Her body felt solid, normal, but that was just an illusion, the same as everything else.

Eventually, boredom overcame self-pity and she left her hiding spot, and took stock of her situation.

The three men were long gone, which was good. Getting shot hadn't hurt her, but she didn't want to go through it again. Next time, she might not be so lucky and find a place to hide.

One good thing about the whole situation was that she'd gotten a picture of them, not much, but it was proof that Umbrella was up to something, probably cleanup, getting rid of the zombies and escaped monsters. The only problem was that she had no clue where her camera was.

She retraced her steps, but to no avail.

Her jacket was there, still caught in the brush, small ragged holes in it from where she'd been shot. There was blood, or what she assumed was blood, around them, something dark green and tacky to the touch. It could have been worse though, much worse. One of the shots could have hit something vital like…

No, she realized, there wasn't anything vital left as far as she could tell. Maybe a headshot could have done some damage, but she honestly wasn't sure about that. She wanted to believe that some part of her nervous system was still there, but the more time passed the less likely that seemed. The leeches were mimicking a rough approximation of her body, shape and appearance and not much else. They weren't functioning as any organs or organ systems, independently breathing and eating for themselves. There was no way, even if she was infected with the Tyrant virus, that they could be keeping any part of her alive.

But somehow she was.

She continued on, retracing her steps as best as she was able.

Her backpack was easy to find, a group of crows noisily picking through its scattered contents, eating her lunch. They took flight the moment she got near. First, she found her thermos, drank the entire thing, then she looked at what else was left. Her sandwich was entirely eaten, which was annoying, since enough of the leeches were still hungry enough that she was hungry. They'd been finding things to eat at the creek, but she wasn't about to eat the same sorts of things that they would, nor would she let them wander and eat on their own. That might give them ideas and she couldn't let that happen, not when she might not be able to call them back together again.

The leeches squirmed in place, rubbing against each other, seeking reassurance through contact. Apparently, they liked that idea as little as she did. That was good, which made for a total of one good thing out of the whole day.

She never managed to find her camera, which left her to assume that one of the three men had found it and picked it up. Her compass was also missing and the little flashlight she'd put in her backpack had come apart when it fell out or was tossed aside when the men searched through her things. She'd put it back together, but it didn't turn on. At least what she'd carried were all normal hiker things, no reason for them to suspect that she was up to anything, otherwise they might have put more effort into finding her.

Retracing her steps out of the woods was going to take a while, so she returned to the creek to refill her thermos and then went on her way, trying to use the sun to orient herself as she looked for anything vaguely familiar.

The noises around her changed, the birdsong growing louder as more and more joined in, and a different set of bugs emerged to buzz and chirp as the shadows grew deeper.

By the time it started to get dark, she was forced to admit that she was lost, but she'd been smart enough to plan for that. Following the slope of the terrain downhill, she managed to get back to the creek. If she followed it in either direction she'd make it out of the woods. In one direction it would reach the road, in the other it should take her within sight of the Spencer Estate.

She hoped that the way she was going would take her to the road.

As it grew darker, she made an unpleasant discovery about the leeches. Being photosensitive wasn't the same as having night vision and once the sun was down, she was as blind as any normal person would be with no moon or stars to navigate by, thanks to it starting to get cloudy.

When forcing her way through the dense brush around the creek got too difficult, she gave up and walked into it, trudging through mud and water that rarely got more than ankle deep. It was miserable, but it would have been worse if not for the leeches. They were actually happy with her needing to walk in the creek and she wasn't about to begrudge them that when they'd saved her earlier.

Eventually, the darkness began to turn to a dreary gray and she could hear cars in the distance.

She'd found the highway.

After being lost in the woods all night, she'd made it out on her own. Except she hadn't even been that lost. She'd known where she'd been going and that she'd make it out. That was more than she'd thought she was capable of on her own and she'd learned from the experience. Next time, she'd be more careful, because there was going to be a next time. She'd get a new disposable camera and try again, following the railroad tracks to the training facility and try there. Being farther out of the way, Umbrella wouldn't have reason to have so much security around the building. If she was careful, used what the leeches could do to her advantage, she'd be able to do it.

Walking alongside the road, she hitchhiked, several cars passing by without slowing down before someone finally stopped.

"What happened to you?" the driver asked as he rolled down the passenger side window to talk to her.

"I went out hiking," she smiled weakly, climbing in when he unlocked the door for her, "Ran into some trouble and ended up in the woods all night."

"You got lucky," the driver said sagely, "There've been stories of some bad stuff happening out there."

Rebecca looked out the window, the first fat drops of rain were beginning to patter against it, "I know."

Bad things were happening, but she was going to do everything she could to put a stop to them.


	10. A Better Plan

This time she wasn't going to settle on a plan that was 'good enough'. She'd been lucky with the leeches and everything else the first time, but she didn't want to count on luck again. Knowing where she was going and how to get there was one thing, being able to actually get there was another. Little as she liked the idea, the time had come for her to figure out what the leeches could do.

She made another trip to the library, this time to get several books on training dogs and cats, figuring that the leeches were smart enough, or at least aware enough of her and their surroundings that some of the same ideas would be applicable.

Her first tests were simple, but vital, seeing if she could make them gather and disperse on command. In the beginning, their efforts were disorganized, but they got the idea surprisingly quickly. She'd started out with verbal commands, 'come', 'go', 'there', 'here', and so on, which she realized were unnecessary once she and the leeches got the hang of things. They were responding to her thoughts rather than words, picking up on nonverbal signals. By the end of it, she only had to think of a place in her apartment and they'd gather there, passing the information from individual to individual as they went.

Because she wasn't sure of what else to do she, rewarded them for a job well done by taking a long shower, letting them play in the falling water. It was as much a reward for her as it was for them, but to some extent the two were the same. The leeches liked to play and she found the shower to be relaxing, so everyone was happy.

From going places, she moved on to retrieving things. A large enough group of leeches was capable of moving small objects, something that would have helped her if she'd been able to do it during her first venture into the woods. She could have ordered a group of them to stick with the camera and hide it, so that it wouldn't have been found and make it easier for her to find.

Hiding was another thing she worked on with them, testing their mimicry abilities and getting a number of good photographs for Professor Rice in the process, proving that they could change their colors to match their surroundings. Again, they were slow with it at first, but they caught on quickly until their default state when they weren't with her, was to blend in with their surroundings as best as they were able. That was a huge relief for her, since she'd worried about what would happen if someone broke into her apartment when she was out. This way, they wouldn't see the leeches unless they really looked for them.

It was important since she was spending a great deal of time away from the apartment, going for walks through the woods, testing her own abilities to get around and find her way. The last thing she wanted was to end up genuinely lost. If that happened, there was no telling how long she'd end up wandering. The tests turned out to be a good thing, because she hadn't really thought about what walking alongside the railroad tracks would be like. She'd figured that it would be faster and easier than going through the woods, which it was, but it was also hotter and dryer, walking over crushed stone and sand was difficult, and the leeches didn't like being so exposed, especially when the sun was out.

So she came to the conclusion that she'd have to start as early in the day as possible, walking for as long as she could right next to the tracks and then going into the woods, and walking parallel to them when the sun got to be too much. Calculating things as best as she was able, she figured that she could cover twice the distance near the tracks compared to in the woods, which meant, no matter how she figured things, the trip would take a full day.

During her practice trips, she tested the leeches as well, letting small numbers leave her or carrying spares in her backpack, filling it with damp paper towels to keep them wet and happy. She could get the spares to climb out and cling to her clothing, changing colors to break up her outline and help her hide. They'd gotten good at it, enough that they could retain their shape while changing colors, meaning that they were less likely to disperse like they had during her first misadventure. She'd practiced letting them do that since, not in the woods, but in the safety of her apartment.

She'd sit down on the sofa, and later, when she trusted them a bit more and had a better feel for how to get them back together, in the bath tub, and carefully urge them to spread out. They'd pull away from her and she'd start to fade away, the leeches no longer mimicking her body, and instead matching their surroundings. The fading was good, very important to her, not just because it made them vanish faster, but because the first few times they hadn't camouflaged themselves, as they reached the point where there were too few of them to properly mimic her, and watching her body start to dissolve into leeches was horrifying. Then there'd been the time that the phone rang during it and she'd gotten up before enough of them had returned, meaning that when she reached for the phone, she'd gotten a look at a mass of leeches shaped roughly like her arm positioning themselves as best as they could to let her grab the phone. There were  
enough of them, and they were moving enough that she'd gotten glimpses of bone between them. She'd ended up standing there, staring at herself until the phone stopped ringing. The reminder of what she was had been enough to set back testing for a day, as she paced the apartment, desperately trying not to think about how there was nothing left, just leeches.

The next day, she'd went back to practicing, forcing herself to ignore the fear and disgust, and allowing the leeches to spread out, seeing how far she could let them spread without losing her focus. It was hard, the idea confusing to the leeches and something she had a hard time wrapping her head around, since it relied so heavily on them acting with her instead of just following instructions.

She learned the trick of it though, keeping enough of them as close together as possible, and not letting the others wander too far, that way her thoughts remained clear, even if her senses got hazy. The leeches let her compensate though, letting a few wander farther from the others, sending back information to her.

It wasn't much or terribly clear, but it was enough to let her know if an area was safe, and if she should pull herself back together, or so she hoped. Her biggest test, the best one she could think of, was to submerge herself completely in the bathtub so she couldn't hear anything other than the sounds of the water moving, and see if a group of leeches in the kitchen could let her know when the microwave timer went off. They could, and it was, for them, a very rewarding trick, let her know so she could get up and they'd get warm food. They liked food that was warmer than room temperature, so she'd taken to microwaving their dogfood. They were good at it, though she wasn't sure how well they'd manage in other situations. She wasn't confident enough to try any tests outside the safety of her apartment.

She trusted them, but only so much, because the fear that something might happen to make them leave was still very real. She could call them back to her, but what would happen if they decided that they didn't want to? They were smart enough to decide something like that, and she'd be helpless to stop them if they did.

So far, they hadn't and that was going to have to be enough for her.

The way she was working with them meant that she was becoming more aware of them as well, to the point where, if she focused, she could feel the leeches that made her, directing their movements, which was helpful for eating, but not much else. It was still something she worked with, because having it so that they were able to watch her back was useful. Maybe when she went back to the training facility, they'd end up alerting her to some danger that she was unaware of, because they did tend to focus on different things than she did.

An example of that was the dead deer they'd encountered while walking next to the train tracks. She'd already suspected that her sense of smell was pretty much gone, because smell and taste were tied so strongly together. Proof was how she hadn't noticed the deer at all, despite it being rotten, torn apart and full of flies.

The leeches on the other hand, had picked up on it and gotten her attention. She wasn't sure of how they'd done it, all she knew was that there was something very close to her that she absolutely had to look at. She didn't know what or where, she just knew it was there and the leeches guided her eyes to it.

She recoiled in disgust, not sure why the leeches wanted her to know about the deer. Her first assumption had been that the state of it had reminded them, on some level, of the zombies and that they were warning her of what they thought was danger. Then she felt it, hunger.

Indistinct and easily ignorable, she could have walked past the dead deer without looking back. There was no urge to fall on the rotten thing like an animal, tear into it the way she'd seen zombies do with their victims. It was simply a matter of the leeches being hungry and aware of food nearby.

She'd been planning on eating anyway, had a sandwich in her backpack if the extra leeches she'd brought hadn't gotten to it.

It turned out that they hadn't and, keeping nausea at bay with the thought that the leeches had eaten far worse things, she grabbed one of the deer's legs and dragged it into the woods.

There, in the shade, she opened her backpack to let the spare leeches out so they could eat. Turning away from them and trying to ignore the buzzing of the flies, she ate her sandwich while the leeches ate the deer.

A picnic in the woods with friends.

It was a behavior she wanted to reward though, because she decided that it was better to have them let her know they were hungry and let her feed them, than to risk having them decide to deal with things on their own. They were already causing enough trouble with that back at the apartment, having continued to explore the walls and slowly wipe out the building's rodent population. She could tell they were ranging farther and farther to hunt, and that it would only be a matter of time before they started getting into her neighbor's apartments. It was a surprise that they hadn't yet.

A lot about them surprised her, even as she learned more and more about them and their capabilities. Marcus hadn't been anthropomorphizing when he'd written about them in his notes. They were very aware, very responsive and to some extent, they clearly knew what they were doing, that actions had consequences. Yes, they were eusocial and had imprinted on her, but there was far more to it than that. They had an awareness beyond what they shared with her, one that was continuing to develop. They'd learned how to turn the tap on in the kitchen when they wanted water or were just bored, though she had to take over to get them to turn it off, and they were working on doing the same with the bathtub. They would hold her place in what she was reading if she put the papers down, try to fetch small objects for her, all little helpful tasks that they carried out without her directly willing them to do so. It was reassuring and slowly, they had stopped terrifying her. They were still disgusting though and she didn't think that would ever change.

She'd never be able to think of them as pets or treat them with genuine affection the way Director Marcus had, but she was no longer in a constant state of fear that they might attack or abandon her.

o0o

Today was the day, a misty September morning, just cool enough to be a reminder that fall was on its way. She set out bright and early on the first bus, making it to the railroad tracks just as it was starting to warm up. Pushing herself, she was able to make it, what she estimated was, two miles before the sun got to be too much and she had to head to the woods, and stick to the shade. From her practice runs, she knew that she'd be able to make it halfway to the facility, some time shortly after noon, then she'd have to take a break and wait for things to cool off. Depending on how cloudy it was, and how far she made it before needing to stop, she'd have to wait for around two hours, less if she made really good progress, and was close to the area where water collected in the ditch next to the tracks. If she was lucky she could rest for just an hour, drink all the water she'd brought with her and hurry to the marshy area. There she could refill her water supplies and wade through the ditch until the sun had gone down enough for her to go back to the tracks.

No matter what happened, she'd be walking back in the dark, but she'd be walking next to the tracks and that would make the trip back the easiest part of the whole thing.

A combination of luck in that it got cloudy again, and underestimating how much ground she could cover, meant that she ended up making it much farther than expected, enough that instead of resting in the woods she pressed on and made it all the way to the ditch.

As far ahead of schedule as she was, she decided to reward the leeches. Finding a particularly shady area near the edge of the ditch she sat down and let them relax.

There was a moment of confusion until they realized her intentions, that the ones making her, as well as the spares in her backpack, were free to explore. She kept enough together that she was fully aware of her surroundings, but the leeches making up that group was constantly changing as they went back and forth. What they noticed, and what she noticed, were utterly different things. She watched as small black birds with brightly colored wings flew between the reeds in at the edge of the ditch, startling dragonflies. The leeches played, working together, trying and failing to catch fish and frogs. It was a game to them, more about the attempt than actually succeeding. They were creative though, trying to chase fish over to where others waited in the reeds, sneaking up behind frogs or trying to get them to jump in a specific direction as part of an ambush. Eventually, one group got lucky and managed to corner a fish, which got the attention of all the others. They finished eating the poor thing in seconds, mouthing at the bones and feeling them long after the fish was gone.

Encouraged, more of the leeches attempted to catch fish, not because they found them particularly tasty, that much she could tell, but because they wanted to try it for themselves.

It was shocking how smart they were, an intelligence apart from her own that somehow managed to work in perfect synchronization with her. Somehow, they'd brought her into their collective and she'd been able to maintain her sense of self. If it had been ants, or bees, or termites, things that were actually supposed to be eusocial, she'd say that she was functioning as a surrogate queen, directing some behaviors while the rest of it was largely autonomous. With the leeches, there was no telling

It was frightening and complicated, something she doubted that she'd ever fully understand or even want to.

Letting the leeches play for a bit longer, she took out her camera and took a few pictures of what they were doing, figuring that if she had to, she could send them to Professor Rice, proof that they were working together to hunt. She wondered what he'd have to say to that, what he'd think of the leeches, her leeches as he called them.

Because if things ended up as badly as was possible, and she did end up stuck in a lab somewhere, it might be easier if one of the people researching her was someone she knew, albeit only from phone calls and letters.

There was no reason for it to end like that though, the training facility was waiting for her and she was sure to find something to use as proof there.

Pushing those negative thoughts from her mind, she stood up and called the leeches back to her. The sun had gotten a bit lower in the sky and even though it was still unpleasantly hot out, she could get moving again.

The leeches returned without complaint and she was on her way.

Sticking along the edge of the woods, occasionally wading into the ditch to keep the leeches happy, she walked on for another hour before something made her stop.

The bugs were making as much noise as ever, but the birds had fallen silent. Last time, that had been the only warning she got of the Umbrella security team approaching.

She froze, listening for sounds of approach.

Sure enough, she could hear something rustling through the leaves some distance away in the woods. Far enough that she couldn't see anything, or even be sure of the exact direction it was coming from.

The sound was moving slowly, hesitantly towards her. Whatever it was, it sounded like there was only one, meaning that it probably wasn't another group of guards, or maybe soldiers, cleaning up the mess. At the same time, the noise didn't strike her as being all that similar to the sounds of her walking through the woods.

Could it have been a deer?

She knew there were supposed to be a lot of them in the woods, not that she'd even encountered one in all her time in Raccoon. No, that wasn't exactly true, there'd been the dead one along the tracks, probably hit by a train.

That sort of thing seemed to happen a lot. During her walks along the tracks, she'd started noticing that there were a lot of scattered, sun bleached bones and occasional tufts of fur. How the deer managed to get hit by trains was beyond her, but it seemed to happen fairly often judging by all the bones.

The sound continued to get closer.

Now the leeches, picking up on her own anxiety, were starting to get antsy as well.

It might be a person. She'd seen enough trash scattered on the ground to know that she wasn't the only one who walked along the tracks. This far from the road there wasn't much, but from where she was standing, she could see some faded bit of plastic and shards of broken brown glass glinting in the afternoon sun.

People came out here.

Normal people doing normal things.

Whatever those were this far out in the woods.

People went hiking, that wasn't too strange.

Maybe she was hearing a hiker.

Maybe they were lost, and that was why they were moving so slowly, having such a hard time getting through the brush.

The leeches had moved from being anxious to interested. She could feel their excitement.

What had them so excited?

Normally they only got this way when she turned on the shower for them, or filled the bath and sat down in the tub with them. Yes, this was bath levels of excitement, the way they got when she was spending time interacting with them.

Or how they'd rear up, falling over themselves from how high they stretched when she brought home cans of liver pâté cat food, instead of their usual dogfood. They knew, they always knew, even when she tried to trick them by thinking about something, anything else. The leeches always knew that she had something special for them. She couldn't hide anything from them and she wished that their thoughts, at least in this situation, were as transparent to her.

Because this was definitely a food response.

What was out there that made them think of food?

The sound grew closer.

In her backpack, the leeches nudged at the zipper, mouthed at the fabric as they tried to get out. Even the ones making her were starting to squirm. The outermost layer remained still, maintaining their mimicry, but the ones beneath writhed against each other, anticipating something that she couldn't figure out.

She caught a glimpse of something through the trees.

Whatever it was, it wasn't a lost hiker, at least she didn't think so. The leeches knew that people weren't food. They'd behaved on the bus, remaining completely still and disinterested. Public transportation was something they were used to, and she hardly even thought about them anymore when she was on the bus.

It was too tall to be a deer.

At least she thought it was. Now that she thought about it, she realized that she didn't know just how big deer were supposed to be.

Could it have been a moose or an elk? Did either of those live in the Arklay Mountains? Chief Irons had talked about hunting trips where he'd shot them, but she didn't know if those had been here or somewhere else.

Why was it with everything she did things that she hadn't thought of, things that shouldn't have been issues in the first place, ended up being problems?

This was at least one she could deal with.

"Hey!"

The thing froze, let out a horrible noise somewhere between a gag and a scream, and then charged her.

A zombie!

This one was different than the others, faster, more aggressive, but it was still a zombie and she could outrun it in the open, which she tried to do.

Leaving the woods, she ran along the train tracks, the zombie following her, its hands raised and claw-like as it made the most horrible noises.

Putting distance between it and herself was easy enough that it wasn't even an issue. The problem was that the thing showed no sign of giving up its pursuit, even as it fell farther, and farther behind. Escape wasn't even a problem, there'd be enough time for her to stop, will the leeches to disperse and hide, wait for the zombie to wander off again. She was fairly certain that it wouldn't try to hurt the leeches, so she'd be fine. The thing was, it would mean leaving a zombie wandering in the woods, near where people went walking. Somehow, she was going to have to deal with it before it hurt anyone. She was going to have to do it, because she was there, and there wasn't really that much it could do to hurt her.

First things first though, it was the proof she was looking for.

Slowing to a jog, she took her camera out of her backpack, making sure to leave the pack partially open for what she was going to do when the zombie caught up with her.

She managed to snap a few pictures before it was too close. She had no clue how good any of them would be, but there would be time to worry about that later, when she sent the camera away for them to be developed.

Letting go of the camera, letting it hang from her wrist by the strap she'd made for it, she shoved her backpack at the zombie. It grabbed it, biting and clawing at the tough material.

The leeches, ready and waiting, poured out, swarming onto its face and hands, attacking it.

Understanding the urgency of the situation, they didn't even bother to start eating, they just bit and chewed, doing as much damage as they could as quickly as possible. By the time the zombie gave up on mauling her backpack, the leeches were already all on it. At her guidance, they coordinated their actions, focusing on the tendons in its wrists to disable its hands, and chewing through the muscles of its face, so that it couldn't bite. Through it all, the thing continued to advance on her, making to attempt to try and shake off the leeches, even as they started to swarm over its nose and eyes. Even though they'd grown, the leeches were still compressible enough that once they got the nerves out of the way, they could force their way inside its skull through the gaps at the back of the zombie's eye sockets. She could almost feel them, squirming and seeking until they found it. It was a tight fit, but the bone there was thin, fragile. Once the first one got through, others followed, thrashing their way deeper and downwards, doing as much damage as possible as, following her guidance, they sought out the most vital parts of the thing's brain to kill it as quickly as possible.

The zombie's death was, in a way, anticlimactic, it didn't seize or thrash, it simply fell to the ground and lay still and she was glad for that. Thinking of it as a dead thing, a cadaver, had made it easy for her to use basic knowledge of anatomy to deal with it, but if at any point it had acted like something alive or in any way natural, she wouldn't have been able to do it. The way it, like all zombies, mindlessly attacked until it was stopped, made it easy for her, just like the way shooting them hadn't been as horrible as she'd feared it would.

The leeches, satisfied that the danger was gone, began to eat. They weren't hungry, it was more about tasting things to figure out if they liked what they'd found. She let them eat while she figured out what to do with the thing she'd just killed.

Logically, she should go and report it to the police, since it technically was a dead body. Except that would mean dealing with Chief Irons, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

Especially when, once a zombie was dead, there was no difference between it and a normal dead body, other than traces of the virus that had created it. If she went back and called the police, she'd be brought in for questioning again and she was sure that once again, Chief Irons would deal with it personally and that, one way or another, the situation would turn bad for her.

Maybe he'd try to make it out to be a murder, because technically she had killed the thing, even if it had been a zombie instead of a person at the time, and there was no proof that she'd done it, because the leeches wouldn't be there, and there was no way of telling what had killed it without them there. So she should be safe.

But if Irons tried to make it that she was the killer, then her house would be searched and she hadn't done a very good job of hiding the bones, and the leeches would be there, camouflaged and close to invisible, but they'd be there. What would happen to the people searching her apartment if she wasn't there to tell the leeches what to do?

There was nothing she could do.

She'd have to leave the dead zombie behind.

Other people walked along the tracks, maybe one of them would find it and report it. That might get the investigation going that she needed.

For now, she was going to give up on making it to the training facility for, at least, today. The zombie had thrown her off her schedule and if she ran into any more, there was no telling how long things would take. Getting to the training facility too late in the day wouldn't do her any good, and walking back at night when there were zombies in the area wasn't something she was about to try.

Calling the leeches back to her, she turned around and started heading back.

Consoling herself that the day hadn't been a total waste. She'd gotten some pictures, figured out a fairly safe way to kill zombies unarmed, and made it nearly all the way to the facility. Tomorrow, with a better plan, she'd try again.

There would be plenty of time for her to think of one on the walk back.


	11. Loose Ends

It was the first week of September, something that had escaped her until she looked at the calendar. Over a month had passed since Bravo Team's ill-fated final mission.

She'd been dead for over a month.

Like so many things about her condition, she didn't know what to think of it, nor did she particularly care at the moment. It was a distraction, and right now there was no time for that.

Over a month had passed and nothing had been done to stop Umbrella, at least nothing she knew about. Jill, Chris and the others were doing whatever they were doing, but from what she could see, they'd had no better luck than her and that wasn't good. The events of the previous day drove that home more clearly than anything else so far.

She'd encountered a zombie in the woods and she'd dealt with it, something that she was understandably proud of. Her, the odd one out in S.T.A.R.S., the least effective member, and she'd managed to deal with a threat on her own. If she hadn't been there, the zombie would have still been out there, wandering the woods.

And that was the problem.

If she hadn't been there it might have wandered deeper into the woods and vanished, or it might have made it to the train tracks and started walking along them, kept going until it made it to the road.

Or it could have found someone and attacked them. It might have killed them, or worse, they might have escaped and carried the virus back to the city. If they only managed to bite a handful of people before they were stopped, that would mean however many more zombies, attacking people, spreading the virus. It wasn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to see the city ending up overrun, the virus spreading and…

She had to do something about it and she could.

It wouldn't be easy or pleasant, but it was something she could do.

It was something that she had to do, because she was the only one who could.

She was going to need to go to the training facility, clear it herself and then the woods around it, at least until the teams working for Umbrella made it there and took matters into their own hands, if they weren't already there. Finding a way to stop Umbrella was secondary to stopping the zombies, but the two goals weren't mutually exclusive. She could easily find evidence while she got rid of the zombies.

This time when she went out, instead of taking a few dozen leeches, she gathered as many of them as she could in her backpack. It wasn't hard at all, she just held the pack open and they slithered right in. She made sure the ones she was leaving were well fed, leaving out two cans of dogfood and several bowls of various dry foods they liked, as well as bowls of water for them to soften it in, so they didn't make a mess of the sink or bathtub.

There were enough of them in her backpack that she could feel their anticipation. They liked the woods, liked exploring, liked it when she stopped to rest and let them wander in new places. She didn't, but she had to do it, there was no one else who could. Even if she got in touch with Jill and Chris, asked them for help, she'd have to come up with a reason for why she couldn't come with them, the most obvious being that she wouldn't have been able to keep up, even before everything had happened she wouldn't have been able to. It was embarrassing and it would be pulling them away from what they were doing.

Her preparations took her long enough that she missed the first bus and had to wait, but that was fine. The humidity was high and dull gray clouds were starting to gather. In the past, it was the kind of day that would have made her want to curl up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book, it still did, but it was also the kind of day that the leeches liked.

By the time the bus arrived, the sky was a solid steel gray, promising rain. She boarded the bus, got a seat towards the back, away from the other passengers and looked out the window as she waited for her stop. On a day like this she wanted nothing more than to sit around the house and listen to the rain against the windows. That wasn't an option though, not until it was all over.

Besides, the leeches didn't like it if she drank anything too hot or too cold. If she wanted to have hot chocolate she'd need to cool it down to lukewarm by putting in a spoonful of ice-cream.

Maybe after she got back and sent the camera out for the pictures to develop, she'd take a day to reward herself, return a few phone calls, send a few letters and sit around her apartment pretending that everything was normal. Just for a day.

The leeches in her backpack squirmed excitedly, she could feel them. It didn't bother her as much as it would have in the past. There was no worry of them trying to escape, they'd do what she told them to and wait patiently to be let out. She'd worked with them enough in the past few weeks to know that. She was even starting to get used to keeping track of what they were doing, being aware of them, even when they were out of sight.

If everything went well, she'd have her proof soon enough and others, people who were far better qualified than her, would take over the situation. Then she could have her day off.

Just for a day, she wanted to pretend, to feel human, before she forgot what it was like.

o0o

The rain had started before she even reached her stop, a light drizzle that, judging by the clouds overhead, would neither let up or worsen as the day went on. She still wore her hooded jacket and long pants, because that was what she'd come to think of as her exploring outfit and she'd grabbed it without thinking. It quickly ended up soaking wet and clinging to her like a second skin, making the leeches squirm in agitation.

She chose to look at the bright side of things, she'd be able to keep a good pace along the tracks and probably wouldn't have to stop to rest. Never mind that this was the sort of weather the leeches liked, and that they were delighted with the prospect of walking through the woods in the rain, even if the outermost layer of them were less than comfortable.

Despite getting off to a late start, she passed the zombie that she'd killed right on schedule. It was a relief to see that it was still there, because she hadn't considered how durable they might be. From what she'd seen with Billy, they needed their nervous system to function, but because they never stopped to linger over the zombies that they'd killed until now, she hadn't been certain if they were really dead or if they'd reanimate again.

The remains of the zombie marked what she considered the danger zone, past it she had to keep her eyes and ears open for anything that might indicate danger.

Because of the rain, the noises of the woods were different, a different set of birds and insects, far fewer than those that came out in nicer weather. The sounds they made were muffled, nearly drowned out by the steady patter of rain against the leaves.

Slowing down to better pay attention to her surroundings, she continued onwards. There was no reason for her to be afraid, but she was. Nothing out in the woods could hurt her, which was in itself frightening. Monsters prowled this stretch of forest, and she was one of them. Eventually, she'd have to come to terms with that, but she didn't want to. She didn't feel like a monster, at least not when the leeches were calm, and she didn't think that she was dangerous, but she couldn't be sure. She probably carried the Tyrant virus and she knew it was contagious, so she had to be careful of that, but she wasn't sure if she could trust herself. How was she to know that nothing would change? Maybe the leeches would take over and eventually she'd stop caring that she wasn't human. She was already willing to let them eat some pretty terrible things, she'd guided them through killing the zombie and would it be that much of a leap to think that she might have them do the same to an Umbrella soldier if she got caught and cornered?

She could tell herself that she wouldn't let it happen, but unless it actually did she'd never know.

Then she thought about Captain Wesker and Billy, Director Marcus' journal entries and the countless Umbrella employees who had to be involved in the horrible experiments that had taken place. Willingness to kill a person was a poor measure of being a monster, or at least the difference between people and monsters.

She listened, she was fairly sure the leeches were listening as well, and eventually she heard the sound of something tramping through the leaves. Calling out would be the easiest way to determine the source of the noise. If it ran away it was an animal, if it came to her it was a zombie, but the recollection of what had happened with the group of zombies in the mansion kept her silent. Just because she only heard one, didn't mean that there weren't others in the area. If she drew them all to her at once she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to deal with them. She was sure she could do it, it was just a matter of how unpleasant it would be for her. To play it safe it would be necessary for her to go to it rather than bring it to her.

She had an idea though, something that had occurred to her on the walk back home the previous day. So she wouldn't get lost, she'd leave a trail for herself to follow back to the railroad tracks, just in case she ended up farther into the woods than she expected and lost sight of the way back.

Opening up her backpack just enough to let the leeches out a few at a time she let them fall to the ground as she walked, ordering them not to wander too far. Once she found the zombie and dealt with it, she could turn around and gather the leeches back to her as she retraced her path to the tracks.

Leaving a living trail behind her, she headed towards the source of the sound, eventually finding it.

She'd been right about it being a zombie, slightly less necrotic than the one she'd encountered yesterday and far less aggressive. Like the zombies in the mansion, it hardly reacted to her presence until she tossed a handful of leeches at it. Even then it only turned to stumble in her direction, a slow shuffle that made it easy for her to evade its outstretched hands.

It was an interesting discovery, that there seemed to be multiple types of zombies, some far more reactive and aggressive than others. Fortunately it seemed that the aggressive ones were rare, though given that she hadn't really dealt with that many zombies, sampling bias was an issue.

Leading the zombie in circles, weaving between the trees to keep it from getting too close, she guided the leeches through the process of killing it. It went faster this time, both she and they knew what to do.

When it fell she gathered the leeches and considered what she'd done, not the details of how she'd done it, but what it meant. She'd killed two zombies so far, preventing them from ever finding and hurting anyone. She was helping, on a small scale, but it was still important.

Retracing her steps back was easy thanks to the leeches. During her fight with the zombie, she'd lost track of which direction she'd come from, but the trail was obvious. Without them she realized she would have been lost, probably for a very long while. They were useful, she wasn't going to go so far as to consider them helpful, but she was starting to learn what she could do with them. It would make clearing the training facility alone a lot easier. She could leave them in rooms and halls to prevent her from getting lost, to keep track of where she'd already been, even check for danger behind closed doors.

Her arrival at the facility itself was anticlimactic. She found no evidence that anyone had been there since she and Billy had left. That was a good thing, it meant that she wouldn't have to worry about people, just zombies and monsters. What wasn't good was that the power was out. There were windows and she'd brought a flashlight and spare batteries so the darkness wasn't total, it just made things more difficult. The package of floppy disks she'd brought with her were useless, since she wouldn't be able to copy anything from any of the computers. It was a shame, but there were plenty of notes that had been left sitting around, a good number of which were fairly damning for Umbrella.

Starting in the main hall, she went from room to room, searching through filing cabinets and killing zombies as she came across them, making sure to take plenty of pictures as she did, especially of the Umbrella logo when she encountered it on things like documents and the identification badges of the zombies she killed, to make it absolutely clear where she was and that Umbrella was responsible.

At first, she took every file and folder that looked like it had potential, but as she ran out of room in her backpack, she got choosier, looking for things that specifically mentioned the Tyrant virus or implied human experimentation.

Finishing the most easily accessible areas of the first floor, she moved onto the second floor, trusting that the leeches she'd left behind to alert her of anything sneaking up on her. The zombies weren't a concern, she hadn't run into any more of the aggressive ones, but the monsters had her worried. They were a lot more unpredictable and during her first time through, she'd tried to let Billy deal with them whenever possible.

She wondered about Billy. There hadn't been anything about him in the news, or at least nothing about him being recaptured, and she checked more or less daily. He was still missing and over the weeks there was less and less coverage on him, which was a good thing. Reading about what he'd done made her feel lucky to be alive, which she knew was foolish. For one thing, he wouldn't have benefitted by killing her, for another she wasn't really alive anymore so there wasn't anything for her to be thankful for. If he'd killed her at the start of things that would have been the end of it, but they'd both seen the benefit of working together. At the end, he'd been ready to shoot her if she tried to stop him from leaving, but by that point it probably wouldn't have done anything, since by her best estimates she was dead sometime around eight hours after that, not that she knew that at the time, so she let him go.

She took there being no news on him as good news, that he hadn't killed anyone, because if he had it would have been her fault for not trying harder to stop him. He might not even have made it out of the woods, though it was probably too much to hope that he'd gotten lost. Billy had seemed like he knew what he was doing, and considering his background, he probably knew how to get around terrain far more dangerous than the Arklay Mountains. She couldn't quite bring herself to hope that he'd gotten killed by zombies, though given what he'd done it wasn't like he didn't deserve to meet some horrible end. The most she could do, she decided, was assume that he was out there somewhere, alive, but laying low, that he wouldn't kill anyone, because he didn't want to draw attention to himself. As long as no one got in his way nothing bad would happen, that's what she'd tell herself.

It was better than telling herself that he hadn't seemed like that bad a guy, which he hadn't, at least until the end when she'd tried to stop him and he'd been ready to shoot her. She knew she was a poor judge of people, having followed Marcus to her death and trusting Captain Wesker. It felt like assuming the worst of people was the safest bet, especially with Umbrella around, but that wasn't like her. The thing was, what she knew about Billy didn't feel like it added up. There had been something about him, a certain sadness tinged with resignation. Did he regret what he'd done and now that he was free, he'd live out his life quietly or even try to do things to make up for what he'd done?

She realized that her thinking about him was an attempt to make sense of things, to create a narrative and a sense of closure, but she was learning that wasn't how things went in real life. In real life, things just happened, there was no reason and people could just do terrible things.

Once this was over, she'd get away from Raccoon City, go to a place where she could actually trust people and figure out what to do from there.

Maybe she'd meet up with Professor Rice, let him help her figure out the leeches and give her a face to put with the name, so she could stop free-associating when she thought of him, thinking about the botfly story, the way his name was Rice and rice looked like maggots, like the ones that had been eating the dead deer.

Yeah, she wasn't going to think about that, especially when from there she started thinking about the leech men. So far she hadn't encountered any, nor had she seen any leeches, but she hadn't made it to the parts of the training facility where they were likely to be. Eventually, she was going to need to, but putting that off until the end while she dealt with normal zombies was fine, especially when she had no clue how she'd deal with a leech man. She didn't have any weapons that would work against one, and the tactic she'd developed for dealing with regular zombies would work just as well on a monster, but wouldn't work at all against a mass of leeches with no central nervous system to destroy.

How would she deal with a leech man?

She'd have to keep an eye out for anything around that might help with that, flammable chemicals, strong acids or bases once she got to the areas where those were stored. Of course, the catch was that those areas were also where she was most likely to encounter a leech man, making it a question of what she found first.

Or what found her.

There was no shortage of possible dangers in the training facility, but there were also plenty of ways of dealing with them if you knew what you were looking for. She and Billy couldn't have picked the place clean of everything useful, just the most readily useable resources. If she needed to she could get a little creative and figure something out.

The deeper she went into the facility, the more thinly she had to spread her leeches and the harder it got to interpret the information they were sending to each other and to her. Part of it was relying on the senses of the individual leeches, which were better than those of normal leeches, but still didn't line up with the way a human would see the world. Some of the leeches were able to sense movement, but figuring out which leeches were detecting what was a challenge. Her best guess was that there were at least two zombies that she'd somehow managed to miss in areas she'd already been through, and that the room with a broken window and papers being blown around in it was causing a lot of confusion for the leeches near there. The zombies that she'd managed to kill were a fine meal as far as the leeches were concerned, and the contentment broadcast from those that were eating was equal parts distracting and disconcerting.

A sudden flash of alarm directed downwards had her staring at the floor, trying to figure out what was wrong with the leech that was at her feet, front end raised curiously.

She stood there, trying to figure out what had it so upset and got nothing from it. At least nothing coherent, the sense of alarm was growing, several leeches sliding down and clinging to her pant legs, waving back and forth, mouths open.

It was an aggressive response, but why?

The leeches wanted to attack, or wanted her to attack something, but there was no visible danger. They were aware of something, but she couldn't figure out what.

The leech on the floor lowered its head and stretched towards her, reaching out to brush against her shoe. Maybe when it rejoined the others, she'd be better able to figure out what had it so upset, because at the moment she wasn't getting anything from it at all.

As soon as the leech touched her, she realized what was wrong.

It wasn't one of hers.

Terrified, she staggered back.

She should have realized it from the start given the size of the thing, more than twice as big as hers, but she'd been so focused on the thought of zombies and leech men that she hadn't bothered to consider the individual wandering leeches infesting the place.

The leech belonged to Marcus and she'd been ready to let it touch her, crawl up her leg and…

It was a good thing that her leeches reacted the way they had, though she didn't understand it. She hadn't thought anything of it during her encounter with the leech man back with Billy. Back then, they might have simply been protecting a food source, but now there was nothing left to eat, no reason for them to be so hostile, but they were. More of them had emerged to wave threateningly at the larger leech. Though she couldn't see it, she could tell that their teeth were bared, ready to attack.

Alarm and attack signals were being sent back and forth through all the leeches now.

They really didn't like Marcus and she couldn't blame them.

No, she realized she was looking at it backwards, they probably wouldn't care either way about Marcus and his leeches, but because of how she felt about it all, the distress it had caused her, the leeches hated him with pure, animal aggression. Even if she couldn't recognize his leeches by sight, they could and reacted.

Understanding the reason behind their actions, she did what she had to do. Walking back to the leech, which by this point had managed to pick up on the fact that her leeches didn't like it and readying for an attack of its own, she stomped down on it as hard as she could, crushing its head end.

The dying leech thrashed wildly, several of hers falling free to land on it and start mauling it until it stopped moving. Only then did they crawl back to her, radiating an immense sense of satisfaction that spread throughout the group.

What they didn't understand was that it was only one leech, there were bound to be others and worse. She was going to have to be extremely careful. How easy it had been to deal with the zombies had made her overly confident, but she wasn't going to make a mistake like she had back in the mansion, not when she knew beyond a doubt that no one was going to come to her rescue this time.

Paying attention to what the leeches were sending to her, which at this point was just a bunch of sound and light and movement with very little clarity thanks to the agitated state they were in, she proceeded. Soon she'd be getting near the part of the building where she'd had her encounter with Marcus, and, no matter how she tried to tell herself there was no reason to worry, she grew increasingly nervous.

In her defense, the leeches weren't helping, she'd encountered several more of Marcus' and had to deal with them.

She was encountering them with greater and greater frequency, and just like her leeches, they could share information. After killing nearly a dozen of them, they began to respond by attacking her. Most of them she was able to avoid, and step on or hit with her flashlight if they ended up clinging to a wall, but it was simply a matter of numbers and odds until one got lucky and landed on her.

It bit her and there was pain, intense, horrifying agony as the leech of hers that it had grabbed was bit in half.

Screaming, she dropped the flashlight.

Her leeches responded immediately, dropping their mimicry to attack, swarming over it and burying it in a roiling mass of green and brown mottled bodies. She could see it thrashing beneath them, feel pain when it managed to bite one of them.

Sobbing in terror she tried to grab it, pull it away from her arm, only to have the leeches making up her hand flow forward to join the fight. By weight of numbers, her leeches were able to win and pulled back, letting the larger leech fall to the floor. They'd managed to kill it, but at the cost of some of their own. She could tell by the way they were moving that they were eating their dead. She was going to have to be careful, too many encounters like that and…

She wasn't exactly sure what would happen if she lost too many leeches. It would probably be similar to what happened when they dispersed too far, her thoughts would drift and grow dim until there was nothing left. Even if some of the leeches survived, if there weren't enough of them she'd be dead and they'd be little more than a colony of unusually large and aggressive annelids.

Somehow, that seemed worse than actually dying, having bits of her wandering around, living as predatory worms.

The leeches in her arms and hands began to settle down and regroup, though the ones making her hands were taking an unusually long time getting back into place, testing different positions and squirming against each other as they worked to rebuild her fingers. As soon as enough of them were in place she picked up the flashlight, the leeches small bodies wrapping bonelessly around it, clinging to it with their mouths and posterior suckers until they were able to get into place. Unable to look away, she watched, noting with some small degree of relief that the ones making her fingers used their tail ends as her fingertips, their suckers rather than their mouths helping them hold onto things, not that she could make out their individual anatomy once they finished and camouflaged themselves.

It had taken them more time than she'd expected to get back into place, and she let out another sob when she realized why.

During the fight, several small bones had clattered to the floor, only now that it was over was she able to place what that sound had been. Did she want to spend the time on her hands and knees looking for them in the shadows? Holding her hand up, she looked at it, flexing her fingers, then passed the flashlight from hand to hand, testing her grip. Nothing felt wrong. The bones must not have mattered anymore and she really didn't want to spend any more time in that room, not when there might be more of Marcus' leeches in it, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her.

Time to backtrack to where she'd walked past a door that to what she thought might have been a supply closet.

After her initial encounter with Marcus' leech, she'd stopped leaving a trail of her own leeches, just in case more of his showed up. One of hers on its own wouldn't stand a chance, as she'd just seen, so she hadn't dared leave any of them. Playing it safe like that meant that she was on her own when it came to navigating. She'd been fairly sure of where she was going, at least until she opened a door and found herself in a room that she remembered well from her first trip through the facility. It had been a lab with several tanks filled with green tinged water and leeches.

The tanks were still there, as were the leeches, but the water was clear enough that even in the dim light from her flashlight she could see them moving, casting eerie shadows on the walls.

It wasn't just the leeches then, Marcus was still around as well, getting ready to continue his experiments.

Carefully, aware of the very real possibility that something might jump out at her from the shadows, she approached the closest tank. The leeches in it were some of the largest ones she'd seen. Completely unafraid, they clung to the glass, watching her. Her leeches responded with their usual aggression, but also curiosity.

It was their interest that made her take a closer look. The tanks were uncovered, but unlike the rest of the leeches she'd encountered, these ones showed no interest in wandering. Instead she got the impression that they were waiting. If that were the case Marcus had far better luck getting them to obey. She was sure that by now the ones she'd left in the bathroom back at her apartment would have gotten out and be all over the place.

Some communication was taking place between her leeches and these ones, the first nonhostile contact they'd made with any of Marcus' leeches. Curiosity had, for the time being at least, gotten the better of aggression.

Bringing her light close to the glass, she got a better look at one of the leeches clinging to it. The thing was enormous, larger than her hand and its underside, rather than being smooth, was covered in small bumps. There was something wrong with these ones. Maybe that was why they were here, because they were being kept isolated from the others. That would also explain her leeches' response, except, no, her leeches had already figured things out. She could tell that their curiosity had been satisfied and aggression was returning. The problem was she couldn't figure out for herself what it was that they'd noticed.

The leeches in the tank were starting to get agitated, picking up on her leeches' hostility. One by one they fell away from the glass, stopped swimming and gathered in a corner of the tank, raising their front ends, just like hers did when they were trying to protect her.

These leeches were protecting something, but what?

They were different from the others, unless she was wrong and all of Marcus' leeches had those lumps of their undersides. She hadn't exactly checked. The thing was, they'd been so noticeable, it wasn't just her seeing them, it had been her leeches paying attention to them as well. She'd noticed as quickly as she had because of the leeches. There'd been something familiar about them, some spark of recognition on an almost instinctual level that hadn't been from her. It was something her leeches knew, something that a leech would know.

"Come on," she whispered, knowing that it didn't matter if she thought the words or screamed them, the leeches would pick up on it no matter what, "Give me a hint, something. Please."

Because she knew the leeches had thoughts and memories of their own, they just didn't, or couldn't, share them with her, at least not with any clarity. Too much of it was based on instinct.

Hunger.

That was that majority of what she was getting from them, the awareness of hunger.

Thrashing, trapped.

The sense of confinement seemed to be an important part of what they were communicating to her.

Hunger!

Not just hunger though, longing might have been a better way of putting it. The leeches longed for something.

Movement.

Something new. Smell! Food!

No, though that was part of it, it wasn't the important part, at least not with what she needed to know now.

Trapped.

Again, the feeling was stronger, more urgent. They'd never been trapped though, so why were they remembering it so clearly?

Curled up tightly. Smooth walls.

Movement outside.

Food! Outside!

Escape.

Leech memories were all feelings, sensations. There were no images, nothing from them that she could really understand, because it was all from their point of view.

Movement, so much movement.

Everything was moving.

Moving and the smell of fear and pain.

Not their own pain or fear, at least not at first. It was simply the awareness of it. Each leech was aware of the others and they all knew that one of their own was hurt and desperately needed help, even if they couldn't understand. That was the answer to their hunger, their longing.

"No!"

Dropping to her knees, she forced their memories from her mind. It had been the recollection of what Marcus had done to her from their point of view and she could recall all too clearly the pain of being shot, of drowning, her frantic, useless struggles as Marcus held her down and the leeches…

They'd been helping. From their memories, she knew their need to help her had been as pressing as their hunger. She'd fed them and they imprinted on her, recognized her smell and known that she was the one who brought them food, who would fulfill that hunger and longing.

It was too much of a blur for her to make sense of it anymore. The memory of the incident was now as much theirs as it was hers. When the fear and pain stopped, when she fell unconscious their memory was all that there had been. They'd been happy, no, elated, they'd found something that had been missing, something that they'd never known was missing until they found it. Prior to that point, there'd been instinct and need, now there was direction and, later, thought. For them it had been a joyful occasion.

But what did the memory of their hatching have to do with anything?

Their hatching.

The leeches in the tanks were carrying eggs.

She had to find the supply closet and dump bleach in those tanks, or something to kill them all before their eggs hatched. Maybe there was something in the room she could use.

The remaining spare leeches she'd brought with her were all out of her backpack, waiting clinging to the outside or sitting on her shoulders, blending in with her clothing. She could feel their weight there as she searched the room, still reeling from letting their memory bleed into her own. They were trying to reassure her, make her aware that they were there and this time she was willing to accept it.

She couldn't find anything, though that hardly came as a surprise. Marcus was insane, not stupid. It wasn't as though he would keep anything around out in the open that could hurt the leeches, especially not when they had eggs. There were plenty of locked cabinets in the room and if she was lucky, there would be something in them.

"Go on," she whispered as she brushed the leeches off of her and guiding them towards the most promising locked cabinets, all of her spares and then some, as many as she dared to let go. She could tell where they were missing from the sensation of looseness and lightness in her chest and stomach, a feeling of weakness all over. They were aware enough that she figured that they'd be able to give her a sense of what was in the cabinets, to let her know if there was anything useful in any of them, without her having to search through each of them one by one. As many locked cabinets as there were, searching them all would take time and she had no desire to spend more time around so many of Marcus' leeches than necessary.

What she really hoped was that she'd feel alarm from them when one discovered something it found unpleasant. That would be the easiest way to tell what she'd found.

It wasn't really that many leeches that she'd sent out, just the most while trying to keep her body and thoughts coherent. Uncomfortable as it was, it mostly worked, even if the way the leeches had redistributed themselves to make up for the missing ones left her looking emaciated. How hard they worked to maintain their mimicry was impressive, she would have assumed that they would have left her with writhing black patches all over her body, indicating where the missing leeches had been.

Leaning against one of the tables for balance, she waited for them to turn up something.

Spread out as they were, there were still enough of them around that she was getting clear feedback from them and they were curious. What she had them doing wasn't like finding food or retrieving specific objects. It required a great deal more guidance from her and they were enjoying the challenge, trying to find large glass bottles by shape and feel, because she was sure that anything really dangerous would be stored in glass.

This would have been the perfect thing for her to take pictures of, proof of strange experimentation, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, not of the leeches. She didn't want people to know what they were, what she was. That would only make things worse for her if, when, the truth about her was discovered. If people knew about the leeches there would be people who would decide that she was a monster and that she would deserve whatever ended up happening to her.

There would be other things for her to take pictures of, she still hadn't made it to the room with all the cages, or the one where it was obvious that they did necropsies on dead specimens, or maybe autopsies. She wasn't really sure what it would be given what Umbrella was doing.

Eyes closed, she thought over what she was going to have to do once she was done dealing with the leeches and their eggs. Keep killing off Marcus' leeches was the first thing, finding a way to quickly kill off large numbers of them would be her top priority, then she'd worry about getting a few more pictures to finish the film in the camera. After that she could finish clearing the building, kill any zombies or monsters she found and head home. A day to recover and then she'd head out again with the goal of checking out the woods around the facility to make sure that there weren't any zombies there. If she didn't find any, she'd move on to trying to get some more photos of the Umbrella teams patrolling the area around the Spencer Estate, because they, more than anything else, showed that Umbrella was determined to hide something. That alone would be enough to get people suspicious of the company. Combine that with the pictures she'd have already sent out and it would be the end for Umbrella

And she'd be the hero behind it all. No one would think that she was a monster, even if the truth got out, people would recognize that she was a victim. It was something that she hadn't really considered until that moment and, much like the leeches, she wasn't sure how she felt about it.

She opened her eyes to watch the leeches and focused on them, on her plan rather than what would happen afterwards. There was too much that she didn't know and it was always the things that she didn't know that got her in trouble.

The leeches continued their work with her guiding them through it. The problem was that their thoughts were indistinct, blurred by those of the leeches around them and further difficulty came from her own inability to properly focus, thinly spread as she was. A great deal of her mental efforts felt like they were devoted to just holding herself together, which was hard with all the movement.

Movement in the tanks when she shone the light on them, herself moving because even leaning against the table she was swaying slightly, and movement on the walls, strange and frightening shadows cast by the flashlight shining through the tanks of water.

Swaying, undulating, strange shapes dancing across the walls, balls of leeches forming dark blots that condensed and dispersed. She watched them, they watched her.

Watching and being watched.

Awareness of movement and shadows. Her own movement and the shadow she cast. The flashlight swaying, making even things that were still flicker and move.

Looming over a tank of leeches that was in turn aware of something over it.

Because even if Marcus' leeches and hers didn't have any interest in each other, they still shared information in the same way. She could pick up a little bit from them, but not much, like quiet conversation overheard through the walls of her apartment.

The only reason it was there was because she was so focused on her leeches. What they felt and sensed was stronger to her than it normally was.

Movement behind her.

Fear.

But of course she was afraid, she was alone in a building full of zombies and monster leeches, both of which would attack her. She would have been crazy not to be afraid.

The nagging suspicion that she was being watched.

Closing her eyes didn't help, only made her more nervous, like something might sneak up behind her. That was impossible though, because even with her eyes closed she could still see the room, hazy impressions of shapes from dozens of points of view, combined to give her a horribly out of focus, nightmarish impression off her surroundings.

The leeches were leaving the cabinets, abandoning their search to return to her.

Desperately, they wanted to get back to her because…

The fear she felt wasn't her own.

Again the leeches were aware of something that she had missed.

She turned around, flashlight raised. If whatever it was had eyes she might be able to blind it, buy herself some time to gather the leeches necessary to deal with it.

"So, you've returned," Director Marcus gloated, nimbly sidestepping the light, "I must say I'm surprised that you've made it this far. Let's get a better look at you, see where things went wrong."

He reached out for her.

She tried to take a step back, but with the table behind her there was nowhere for her to go.

His fingers closed around her arm in a grip that, like the first time, caught her off guard with its strength.


	12. Closure

The leeches in the tank behind her swarmed, washing over the edge in a solid wave, hurrying to surround her. The alarm signal was sensed by the others as well, the group in each tank gathering as one and pouring out onto the floor, joining with leeches that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and herding her leeches back to her.

The leeches making her reacted, recoiling and pulling away from Marcus' touch until he was holding onto bare bone, his hand surrounded by a ring of leeches, all facing it, mouths open, teeth gnashing. They knew that they didn't stand a chance of hurting him, but they were still ready to defend her, anticipating an attack by one of his leeches.

Marcus' expression went from concern to fascination, "The imprinting process seems to have been a success. I had assumed by the state you were in and your repeated attacks that the something was wrong, but no, you and the leeches seem to be working together perfectly. So why the hostile response?"

The leeches were coming back to her, enough that her focus regained sharpness and her strength was returning.

Screaming, she used her free hand to try and hit him in the side of the head.

She'd expected a jarring impact, her knuckles against bone, but there was nothing of the sort. Leeches flowed and yielded against her fist, absorbing the blow and then reshaping as though nothing had happened.

For weeks she'd been worrying about the bones of her wrists and fingers, not ever thinking about the state that Marcus must have been in. At least it answered her question about what would happen if she lost too many bones, eventually her leeches would be strong enough that it wouldn't matter.

If she made it to that eventually. At the moment, it didn't seem terribly likely.

Marcus grabbed her other arm when she made another attempt at punching him. She felt his grip for an instant, crushingly strong, then the leeches retreated. Not even the leeches wanted to let him touch them, sharing her disgust with what he was, what he'd done to her. It was strange being in such complete agreement with them on something like that, when normally what she and they found to be repellant was so vastly different. It was especially disconcerting for her, since her thoughts were still partially synchronized with theirs, enough so that she could feel their desire to attack, protect her from what they understood was a threat, even if the reason was way beyond their comprehension.

Marcus nodded, smiling and seemingly indifferent to the ring of angry leeches surrounding his hand, but why would he worry? Her leeches were less than half the size of the ones that made him and he had so many more. Even if she were able to kill the majority of them, there were plenty of others to take their place.

She tried to kick him and he responded by forcing her to her knees. It was almost effortless for him and no matter how she struggled, she couldn't get up or pull free.

"I simply don't understand…" he trailed off, talking more to himself than to her, "The bonding was clearly successful, but there's no sense of recognition. I can't…"

He tightened his grip on her arms, the unprotected bones of her radius and ulna grinding against each other, twisting in place as the leeches struggled to keep them properly positioned. At the same time, he pressed down harder on her, to the point where she could feel the leeches moving, caught between wanting to hold form and move to help dissipate the pressure. With nothing left to cushion them, bones ground against each other in ways that were sure to cause damage. She could hear it, feel the vibrations, but there was no pain.

Of course there was no pain, it was just bone, not leeches.

Something was happening, some communication between his leeches and the ones that made up her body. She couldn't understand it or even begin to guess the point of it, but her leeches didn't like it. How much of it was her own feelings towards Marcus and how much of it was theirs she couldn't tell, all that mattered was that they were mirroring her own feelings perfectly. She hated him, and even if they couldn't understand why, had every reason to want to seek contact with more of their own kind, what she felt overrode all that. Proof that, even if she was something separate from them, they were still very much a part of her.

She tried to move her arms, twist free of his grip, but in their effort to avoid contact with Marcus, the leeches didn't have a very good hold on the bones there and he was holding the bones themselves. Bone creaked under the strain, something shifted out of true and pressure was applied at angles that the bones weren't meant to deal with. Her right ulna snapped with a sharp, dry crack.

Marcus let go, and the leeches surged forward, hurrying to try and get everything back to where it should be.

"Of course!" His smile returned and he pulled her up to her feet by her still intact left arm, "My assumption of failure left me blind to success. But that's what this is, complete and total success. The goal was to create another individual like myself, not simply a puppet with some semblance of thought yet otherwise acting merely as an extension of myself. You're a complete individual unto yourself, with your own thoughts and likely misinformed opinions. You don't understand, hence your lashing out."

"Let go of me!"

Of course Marcus ignored her.

She considered trying to punch him again, but with one of the bones of her arm broken she was too afraid to try. The leeches were doing an okay job of holding it together, but she wasn't sure how strong their grip was and if she made things worse, further damaged the jagged ends of the break, she wasn't sure what would happen. Unlike most of the other injuries she'd received, ones where it was just leeches that had gotten damaged, it was an injury that that couldn't be repaired. Damage to her bones wouldn't heal, because not even the Tyrant virus could initiate regeneration in dead tissue, and she didn't know if her leeches were strong enough yet to compensate for the loss of a long bone.

While he'd been talking to himself, more of Marcus' leeches had gathered in the room, forming a ring around hers, forcing them back towards her. They'd started to crawl up her legs, a number of them clinging to the outside of her clothing, swaying and watching Marcus and his leeches, afraid, but ready to attack if it came to that.

"There's time for me to explain things now, so you can understand how lucky you are," Marcus beamed and caught her completely off guard by finally letting go of her arm.

She stumbled backwards, bumping into the table behind her and knocking over the tank sitting on it, as she struggled to keep her balance. Water and slime on the floor made it impossible and she fell, the tank crashing down next to her, sending shards of glass in all directions.

Marcus stood over her, offering her a hand up, "Caught up in the little details, they're probably all that you can see at this point, you don't realize how amazing what's happened to you is."

She stared at his hand, frozen in fear. As little as she wanted any contact with him, she was afraid of what would happen if she rebuked his offer of help. He could have his leeches attack her, kill every single one of the leeches that made her.

"The leeches ate me," she said softly, accusing him of what? Murdering her?

Smiling sadly, Marcus knelt down to look her in the eye, "Yes, but simply so that they could replace what needed to be replaced. If there had been time, if you had been there when I returned, I would have explained it all to you, guided you through the wondrous process taking place, but plans, my own and those of the ones conspiring against me, were already in motion and I had to act. Having only recently awoken, it was necessary for me to learn what had happened since my assassination. I'll be honest with you, I hadn't expected you to reawaken so soon, otherwise I wouldn't have left you unguarded to wander off on your own."

She hadn't wandered off on her own, but there was no point in correcting him. Instead she remained silent as he continued. Letting him talk seemed the safest thing to do for the moment.

"I had assumed it would have taken considerably longer, in light of the length of time it took for the leeches to completely bond with me and restore me to health. I should have considered that things would go so much faster for you, given how many leeches you had working to restore you, and the fact that they were several generations removed from the ones that originally worked so hard to save me. Tell me, how long did it take?"

How long did what take? For her to wake up, for her to die, for the leeches to finish eating her?

Marcus was insane, but she was terrified to say as much. One wrong move and she'd be dead, but maybe if she kept him talking, an opportunity to escape would present itself. She couldn't fight him, but running away was a possibility. Rather than answer his question, she tried to redirect the conversation away from the leeches and what they'd done to her, to something that might actually help her, "What are you going to do?"

"Contact Oswell and inform him of my success. Given what I've accomplished and what was done to me, I believe that it's perfectly within reason to gloat. In light of my success, I assume he'll seek forgiveness and offer to reinstate me in my previous position, especially since I have you as proof of concept. When he sees what happened to me can be replicated, and easily, he might even reconsider his little pet project. After that, I'll likely seek employment elsewhere to continue my research. Given my background, I won't have any difficulty with that, or guaranteeing you a position as my assistant."

It was a distressingly simple plan, but it was a relief. She'd been worried that he'd want to spread his leeches or something equally horrifying, but no, all he wanted to do was get back to work. It made sense in a frightening sort of way that he'd want to pick up exactly where he'd left off. Except the work he wanted to return to was making monsters and experimenting on people.

"What if I don't want to help you?" it was a dangerous question for her to ask, but she needed to know the answer.

"If you don't want to work with me, I can see to it that other arrangements can be made," Marcus shrugged, "You're clearly clever enough and it would be a shame to waste that. Is there anything particular that you're interested in, any field of research you find especially fascinating?"

Of all the responses that she'd expected, most of them threats, she'd never imagine a far more direct form of the offer Wesker had made to her back when she'd first joined S.T.A.R.S.. A job with Umbrella or a company just like it. If she took him up on his offer, she'd be safe, have a job of the sort most people only dreamed of, because Marcus, being one of the Umbrella's founders would be welcomed by any of its competitors simply for the wealth of knowledge he possessed on the company's inner workings, and he clearly didn't intend for her to just end up as a lab tech or a glorified secretary. All she had to do was go along with him, give up on stopping Umbrella and become part of what it was trying to do.

Become part of a company that was making monsters.

Become a monster.

"For a time you'll have to work under me though, think of it as an internship, while I observe you and take notes on your progress," Marcus continued, "You've come much farther much more quickly than I anticipated, but I want to wait at least until the leeches are fully grown to turn you out on your own. I suppose you could think of it as much about scientific observation as me being rather protective, not of you as a research subject though. Think of it more in familial terms. Your leeches are the offspring of mine and I have good reason to want to see them through into their version of adulthood. I can see that they've already grown quite quickly, as is typical of Tyrant infected organisms, but I'm curious if the rate of maturation is accelerated as well."

Rate of maturation.

The leeches had grown impossibly fast and if they aged at the same rate, how long would she have to live? She knew from her research that leeches were fairly long lived, some reaching up to ten years of age, but the way hers had grown, she might only have a year or two before they started to die off. That had to be what Marcus was talking about, seeing if she was really like him, or if her leeches would die off and kill her in the process.

"So the leeches might not actually be a success?" she whispered, wanting an answer before she made any decisions about anything. If she was going to die in a year, maybe it would be better to end it here and now, attack Marcus and do as much damage as she could rather than wait, "I might be dead in a year or two?"

"What? Not for any reason I can see," Marcus sounded indignant, "The leeches have succeeded beyond my expectations! We wouldn't be having this conversation if they weren't."

"But the leeches are going to grow old and die," she countered, not sure what exactly it was that she wanted to hear from him. She didn't want to die, but knowing that it would happen soon would make the decisions she was going to have to make so much easier. If she was going to die, it would be easier for her to turn herself in to some lab or another, knowing that she wouldn't be trapped there forever and that she'd be doing as much as she could with what little time she had left, "What happens then?"

"Maybe I overestimated your cleverness," Marcus spoke with mock disappointment, a teacher goading an especially slow student into greater effort, "Yes, they'll get old eventually, though true to the reputed properties of the Progenitor strain, the Tyrant virus will greatly extend their lifespan. So far none of mine have died of old age and show no sign of senescence, though plenty have died in accidents or through deliberate malice," he looked at her, his expression grave – either a warning or the threat she'd been waiting for, "I expect that yours will be very much the same. Those that die will be replaced as they begin to reproduce. You'll have to be careful until then of course."

"Reproduce?" she thought of the leeches back in her apartment, spares just in case, then she looked at the massive swarm surrounding her and Marcus, considering all the leech men he'd made. Would that be the situation with her leeches given time? That the danger wouldn't be them dying off until there were none left, but that there would eventually be so many of them she wouldn't be able to keep them hidden. How would she control them when there would come a time when there were more of them than her?

Marcus' expression brightened, "Ah! You hadn't considered that, had you? I don't know how much you found while snooping around, but yes, unlike what happens with the vast majority organisms when infected with Progenitor derived strains, the Tyrant virus has not rendered my leeches sterile. The first test group was, but later batches, as I continued to refine the strains I was working with, weren't. Our long term goals meant that it was necessary that the subjects remain capable of reproduction. I feel that with time, I'll be able to create strains that will be just as effective on higher organisms, not that it might be necessary anymore, given my success with you. As it was, I was lucky that I accomplished what I had when I had, otherwise Albert would have succeeded in his attempt at killing me."

But Marcus was dead. There was nothing left but leeches. Was he really that insane that he thought that the leeches had saved his life rather than eating him, and replacing what they ate? Yes, hers had kept her alive for a while, covering up her injuries until she died from a combination of those injuries and the leeches that were eating her from the inside out. With Marcus, the whole process might have been slower, but the results were the same and with as much time as he'd had, he should have realized that.

"You seem doubtful, what is it? Unless…" he trailed off, nodding slowly to himself, "Has progress really been that fast for you?"

He grabbed her by the arm again, and again the leeches retreated from his touch, leaving him holding onto bone. This time, there was nowhere for her to escape to, and she had to sit there as he raised his free hand and ran his fingers up her arm. The leeches rippled and shifted like water before his touch, revealing themselves and turning to bare their teeth at him, countless little fangs threatening him. It was a wave, leeches rearing up and then settling down and fading back into hiding as his touch passed.

Further up her arm, across her chest. Even beneath her clothing, the leeches recoiled at his touch, she could feel their fangs catch against fabric.

Farther still, to her neck.

"No!" she tried to pull back from him, not that it mattered. It wasn't as though any of it was a shocking revelation, but she still didn't want him touching her face, feeling the leeches along the corner of her mouth pull back, leaving bone and teeth exposed. She could see it at the edge of her vision, the mottled, writhing mass of their bodies.

"Amazing," he spoke in an awed whisper, "What took years to accomplish for the first time was repeated in mere months! With so little time to adapt, no wonder it's proving so difficult for you…"

Her vision blurred slightly, as his hand got too close to her eye and the leeches there began to move. It was too much for her, for the leeches, one of them stretched out farther than the others, and it took all her willpower to hold it back and keep it from biting him. Not yet, not when she was cornered and had nowhere to run. If she could make it out of the room, into the hall, then maybe she could do something.

Marcus continued to stroke the side of her face, his fingers brushing against bone as the leeches shifted away from his touch. The way he was watching her, watching what the leeches were doing, made it clear that for all his talk, he saw her little more as an experiment. He claimed that he was pleased that she'd retained freewill, but that was a lie. What he'd wanted was proof of his own superiority, something that would agree with him about how brilliant he was and fawn over him the same was his leeches had. And maybe, he still thought he could accomplish that with her, offer her a job as his assistant and then try to win her over. It would never work, she'd never forgive him for killing her, but he didn't know that.

"Please, stop," her words were slurred, soft and indistinct from the movements of the leeches.

"It must have been very frightening for you," Marcus spoke softly and lowered his hand away from her face. What he didn't do was let go of her arm, "Waking up alone, not understanding what was happening, struggling to come to terms with the remarkable transformation taking place."

She stared at him, blinking as her vision returned to normal. The leeches were calming down, as much from his moving away, as from the plan she had started to come up with.

"Tell me, how long did it take?" His eagerness to hear about what he had accomplished was stronger than his desire to comfort her, or maybe he thought that she actually wanted to talk about what happened.

"I died less than a day after I made it out of here," it was something she'd been thinking about since it had happened, but saying it out loud made it worse, made it real, "There was nothing left after – "

"No," Marcus cut her off angrily, "You didn't die and now you never will. You don't have to worry about aging, growing old and infirm. You'll stay as you are indefinitely. I expected the process to take much longer, give you more time to adjust and come to terms with the gift you've been given, but I suspect with the number of leeches that imprinted on you and their being born ready to do so, they were able to take care of things much faster than mine managed. Don't worry though, I can still teach you about yourself, make you understand why you should be thankful rather than terrified. You're thinking about this in terms of loss, but in truth the only thing gone is your mortality. The leeches will repair any injury, replace any part of you that's damaged and as they mature, they'll reproduce so that even as individual leeches die, new ones will be there to take their place. That's the beauty of it, the leeches will replace themselves, much like the cells of the human body, only superior.

"The human body is a living Ship of Theseus, cells dying and being replaced constantly, but the replacements are inferior. Scar tissue is never as smooth or strong as the flesh prior to the injury, broken bones, no matter how carefully set, show damage years afterwards, and even the natural progression of cells being replaced as they wear out isn't flawless, hence senescence. The leeches avert all of that. New leeches are completely new and healthy organisms, and will be equal or superior to the ones they replace."

It took time for the enormity of what he'd said to sink in. She'd already mostly come to terms with being dead and having to cope with the leeches that had replaced her. The idea that over time the leeches would replace themselves, that given enough time they'd all be replaced with a completely new set was near incomprehensible. She could deal with the leeches trading places, moving to and from her throughout the day when she was in the apartment, but that was different. Those were, as far a she was concerned, the same leeches. Eventually there would be new ones, ones that would imprint on the memory of her preserved by other leeches. A copy of a copy on, and on, and on until something went wrong.

How could she be sure that the leeches wouldn't let things degrade over time, simply due to imperfectly passing on information?

Marcus seemed fine after ten years, but he also claimed that he still had many of his original, smaller batch of leeches, and the challenge of using him as a point of reference was that she'd never known him from before. She'd read his writings, all uniformly horrific, which lined up with the way he was now, but that was all she had to go by.

"So you see," Marcus nodded sagely, as he pulled her to her feet, "As much as you have to get used to, you have plenty of time for it. Don't dwell on what you imagine you've lost, instead, start thinking long term. Working for me would be perfect. Near unlimited resources and no silly constraints to worry about. Think about it."

No, she couldn't, because if he was correct, long term was far too long when keeping herself in the here and now was the only thing keeping her sane. Thoughts of the future revolved around what she'd become, in the present it was all about what she could do.

What could she do?

Nothing in this room.

She had to get out, but first –

"I need," she gestured vaguely at the leeches that were still surrounded by Marcus', unable to rejoin her, "Let me get them back."

Marcus' leeches cleared a path for them. It made sense, with him it was all about his leeches, so there was no reason he'd assume it was any different with her. Projecting, he'd believe that she sought reassurance from them the same way they sought reassurance from her.

They slithered across the floor and she knelt down to help speed up their rejoining her. She let them flow over her arms, some sinking in and rejoining the group that made her, others returning to her backpack. Feeling them there was a relief, she could actually feel her strength returning, making the danger of spreading herself too thin, even when she still had full awareness, clear.

"You are very confused," Marcus spoke behind her, causing all of the leeches on her back to squirm and focus on him, "It's strange. I can't tell if something went wrong with the imprinting process or not. Are you in conflict or working in perfect synchronization?"

She didn't turn to look at him, keeping her focus on the leeches, trying to share her plan with them, make them understand what they were going to have to do. The leeches on the other hand, were very focused on Marcus, to the point where she could sense him moving behind her, even giving her a vague impression of his shape as they watched his every move.

When he reached out towards, her she could see and feel the movement of his hand. It came into sharper and sharper focus as the leeches turned to face him, the ones on her shirt lifting their heads and swaying threateningly, while the ones making her pushed against her shirt, poking their fangs through the fabric.

He pulled his hand back, "I believe further observation in a controlled setting will be necessary."

Yes, with him it was all about the leeches. He wanted to figure out why they weren't acting the way he'd expected them to, why she wasn't acting the way he'd assumed she would.

Because, it had never occurred to her that she'd recognize him as the monster he was. Even before the leeches, he'd been a monster. The leeches just let it show.

"Okay," she agreed meekly, collecting the last of her leeches. A controlled setting probably meant one of the labs, the path to which she was fairly sure would take her past the closet she'd been looking for earlier. If not, there was bound to be something useful in the lab itself. Some of the chemicals the researchers here had been using were kind of frightening with how toxic they were, though given what they were working with she could understand it.

Because the way she was acting lined up with his expectations, Marcus stepped back and guided her out the door, his leeches starting to disperse so that she had to step over them.

Unfortunately, not all of them left, a flowing trail of them followed.

She moved slowly, leaning against the wall as she went. When Marcus tried to help her along, the leeches making her would react, threatening until he backed off. They didn't even need any prompting from her for that, though with each repetition the behavior became more exaggerated as she affirmed, with her own reactions to what they were doing, that it was the right thing.

"I don't understand why they're so reactive," he commented as he backed away yet again, "I'd blame it on their being high strung due to their being so young, but that doesn't make sense. The development of their nervous system should be complete. Annelids, even ones as remarkable as my leeches don't have a juvenile stage in terms of mental development."

"Why not?" she asked, hoping to keep him distracted as they drew nearer to a door she was sure was the one. It was plain, had an ordinary lock and didn't look like it opened to anything terribly important, exactly what the door to a maintenance closet should look like, "They're, curious and playful."

"Playful?" he sounded shocked, "Surely you're anthropomorphizing."

Marcus laughed at his little joke.

"They respond positively to stimulus that isn't inherently positive," she offered, "They like running water and swimming against currents. If I move my hand through the water, they'll follow the motion and if I stop, they swim around my fingers, trying to get me to start again."

"They're schooling," he said dismissively, "The precursor to the behavior they exhibit now."

"You wrote a paper on that," she commented for the sake of keeping him talking, as she leaned against the door and let several leeches slide free from her and slip under the bottom of the door.

"Yes, I…" he trailed off, amazed, "You were looking into my early research! That's why you came back here, isn't it? To learn more about what I was doing. It's a fascinating subject matter, isn't it? Of all invertebrates the leech was best suited to my research thanks to the way its nervous system works, complicated for an invertebrate, but well enough understood that it holds few surprises."

By accident she'd found the perfect thing to say. Having an accident work in her favor for once was a nice change of pace.

"I couldn't find a copy of that paper," she leaned against the door, willing the leeches on her clothing and in her backpack to fall to the floor and slide under the door, "But I don't think what you described in it is the same as what I've seen the leeches do."

"Really?" He was interested in what she had to say, willing to listen now that she was talking about him, his work, "What have you observed?"

"They do school," she focused as much attention as she could on the leeches that she'd sent out, "And they work together, like I read in your notes, but it's more than that. They've figured out how to turn the taps on in my apartment, and they only do it when I'm home so I have to go in and turn the water back off. They knock things over, roll bits of food across the floor. They do it to get my attention."

Marcus looked fascinated, but her attention was on the leeches she'd sent under the door.

She'd been right, the way the leeches responded to what was in there made it that the closet was full of cleaning supplies and there was something in it, on the floor right near the door, that she was certain was a bottle of bleach or something similarly caustic. One of her leeches had brushed against the side of the bottle, come into contact with residue left from when it had been poured, and she could feel its pain. The question was, how much was there in the bottle.

Ignoring the pain, she had several of the leeches work together and push at the bottle. They weren't able to move it. That meant it was full enough that it was worth making a try. Experience told her that waiting for a better opportunity would only give things the chance to get worse.

More leeches fell away from her, slid under the door.

"Sorry," she smiled nervously, hoping that Marcus would believe her, "They're hungry I think. Looking for rats. Sometimes they wander and I can't always get them to…"

She had no idea where she was going with her rambling explanation, she just kept at it as she fumbled with the door, hoping that it wasn't locked.

It wasn't and when she got it open, she was greeted by a truly shocking sight. On a shelf up at eyelevel was a gallon jug of muriatic acid, almost completely full and a quick glance down revealed that the bottle on the floor was indeed bleach.

"I think they're playing with me, trying to hide," she laughed nervously, hoping that Marcus wouldn't realize what she was doing when she put her hand on the shelf, sending a few leeches to try and open the bottle. The ones on the floor followed suit, much more carefully, they went to work with the bottle of bleach.

She kept her flashlight aimed everywhere except those two bottles, hoping that, like her, Marcus was as blind as any normal person would be in the dark. The way his leeches were everywhere, he was probably relying on them and familiarity with the facility to get around in the dark.

Marcus watched her as she picked up leeches one at a time, cycling them so that every time she got one another would slither off.

"They are playing," she said with some degree of confidence, because that much was true. She could tell that they liked the game of slithering away only for her to grab them, the ones on her clothing and in her backpack jostling amongst themselves to be the next to try and escape.

"It would seem that way," Marcus sounded disbelieving, but not actually suspicious, "I can't read them as easily as my own leeches, but there's definitely a sense of excitement. Fascinating. I'll have to start paying more attention to the ones still in a juvenile state. Perhaps it's some innate quality that they possess and I missed, or perhaps it has something to do with your own youth."

She kept at it until a sense of revulsion let her know that the sets of leeches working with the bottles had succeeded.

No matter how things went, she was going to lose some of them, but she could try her best to minimize her losses.

She let the flashlight fall to the floor, the leeches she'd left clinging to it turning it off and plunging them into total darkness. Calling the leeches back to her, she grabbed both bottles, their location obvious thanks to the leeches clustered around them.

"What –"

Marcus' question couldn't have come at a better time, giving her something to aim at when she splashed the contents of the bottles. At the same time, the leeches rolled the flashlight back to her, turning it on so that she could see Marcus staggering back, dead and dying leeches peeling off of him and falling to the floor.

"You ungrateful bitch!" All pretense was gone as he screamed in rage and pain, "I'll kill you bit by bit, keep what's left to study and see what went wrong. Then, if there's enough, I'll bring you back to do it again until you learn!"

Grabbing the light, she ran, more worried about the chlorine gas filling the hall than she was about Marcus and his dire threats. Her aim had been true and the bleach and acid had mostly landed on him, but enough had fallen on the floor in such a way that the bulk of his leeches were on the other side of the puddle and would have to crawl through it to get to her.

When she chanced a look back, she could see that they were trying, because unlike her, Marcus had plenty to spare. More of them were gathering around a writhing, shapeless lump that had to be Marcus. He was still yelling, though it was more howling and wet hissing as the leeches continued to swarm over him.

Caught up in the center of the cloud of gas, they died as quickly as they gathered, a crumbling mass that fell apart as quickly as it formed. As she watched it rose up, flailing, half-formed limbs clawing at the walls, then it collapsed into a twitching pile that slowly sank down to the floor.

She desperately wanted to believe that Marcus was dead, but that would have been too much to ask for. There were too many leeches for her to have killed all of them, the ones that he'd had with him at the time only represented a small portion of their total numbers, and from her own experience, she knew that the leeches were interchangeable. At the most, she'd killed some part of him, maybe enough that what was left wouldn't really be him, but it would be something and even if it was just a swarm of leeches, there were enough of them to be dangerous.

Noise, movement, vibration, a jumble of secondhand sensations washed over her.

She'd made it back to the part of the facility, where she'd been leaving a trail, forcing her to slow down and call the leeches back to her.

The connection worked both ways and her fear spread through the scattered swarm. In response, what they sent her took on a renewed urgency.

Sound! Lots of it, and movement in all directions. Movement on movement, jumbled shapes.

The shapes were jumbled, but the sounds were sharp.

Some of the sounds were sharp.

Sounds they'd heard before.

Pain and fear, but only the memory of it.

Sounds that they? she? didn't like.

She was still trying to figure out what they were telling her, when she heard the sounds for herself.

Gunfire.

She wasn't alone in the building.

As much as she wanted to imagine that whoever it was would help her, she knew that it was far more likely she was hearing the sounds of an Umbrella cleanup team taking care of the zombies that she'd missed. If she ran into them, she'd likely end up getting shot and depending on how well prepared they were, what kind of monsters they were expecting, they might have the means to do her actual harm. Thanks to the noise they were making and the leeches she'd left behind, she could easily tell where they were and would be able to avoid them. Right now, she had a clear path out the door and into the woods, but first she needed to finish collecting her leeches. She'd already sacrificed some to escape from Marcus and she wasn't about to lose any more. Little as she liked the leeches, they were living things and the fact that they would die for her made her feel at least some sense of responsibility for them.

Besides, if enough of them died she'd die, so she couldn't afford to take any chances.

When the gunfire stopped and didn't start up again, she had to rely on the leeches to track whoever it was. The delay and number of leeches, the information had to be passed between before it reached her gave her some idea of where they were, but it was far from precise, meaning that she was forced to slow down and wait.

Collecting leeches as she went, she paid more attention to the information she was getting from the scattered leeches than what she was doing, which came back to bite her, literally.

One of the leeches on the floor crawling towards her turned out to be one of Marcus' and when she stopped to let it climb onto her, there was a flash of aggression as it reared up and bit her.

Fortunately, it only got the fabric of her pants and her leeches were quick to deal with it, emerging to bite it just behind its head. It let go to try and fight back, but her leeches held it in place, biting and pulling. When they finally released it and let it fall to the floor, they'd managed to bite clean through it and sever its head. She hadn't told them to do that, it was something they'd figured out on their own.

They were getting better at killing things.

The ones on her clothing wiggled and nudged at her, trying to reassure her. It was a behavior she realized that they'd picked up, because it was what she'd expect of an affectionate animal. Were they doing it because they were actually trying to comfort her, or was it some subliminal signal she was sending to them? Marcus had made his little joke about her anthropomorphizing, but was that really what she was doing? If she was that would mean that she was as crazy as she was, giving the leeches signals on how to act and then interpreting her doing what she told them to do as their own actions. That didn't explain their memories though, the overwhelming need they'd felt to protect her before they were her. Again she could be projecting, but it didn't feel that way. Marcus had said that his own leeches had cared for him, saved his life after Captain Wesker tried to assassinate him.

There was so much that she was going to have to decide if she wanted to figure out. For now, she just had to get out.

Her leeches sent her a warning, and she jumped back away from the wall she'd been standing next to, without understanding why she did it.

Leeches, Marcus' leeches, were pouring out of a vent along the floor, dozens of them fighting to get through all at once.

Farther down the hall, she could see the same thing happening with the other vents.

Caution wasn't an option, she had to run.

Her leeches were ready, dealing with any of his that tried to reach up and grab her, but most of them slithered past her, at first trying to block the hall in front of her.

After she jumped over a pile of them, one that reached out for her with appendages that almost resembled arms, they stopped trying to catch her. Instead they began to gather together, to reform Director Marcus, likely having realized that she could run faster than they could crawl.

What she was picking up through her leeches seemed to line up with that.

Except the leeches were too large, there were too many of them. Marcus should have been fully formed by now, but all there was behind her was an ever growing pile of leeches, mounding up and branching out. Working together, her leeches gave her a blurry image of what was behind her, just in case she wanted to know.

A blunt, eyeless nodule bulged forward, splaying open like a flower to reveal rings of gnashing teeth. The thing hissed, thousands of leeches sliding against each other.

KILL YOU! EAT YOU!

It was sound more than words, but her leeches picked up on the intent.

Four more appendages burst out of the pile, different from the 'head' only in that they were being used to propel it forward, towards her. The thing scuttled, lizard-like, big enough that it nearly filled the hall.

Giving up on tracking the team clearing the building, she sent out for her leeches to flee, get to the door as fast as they were able.

She'd be able to get the ones that were in her path, the others…

She wasn't going to think about them, more parts of her that would be left behind.

Parts that, according to Marcus, would be replaced in time.

In all her preparations, she hadn't thought to bring any sort of weapon with her, not that she owned any of her own, unlike everyone else who had been in S.T.A.R.S.. Then again, even if she had, she wouldn't have had anything that would work against something like Marcus. There were too many leeches.

Marcus, the leech swarm, surged forward, gaining on her.

It hissed again, the sound drowned out by the noise of it pulling itself down the hall, but she felt the spray of slime. Her leeches recoiled, but held together.

Up ahead, she could see the door to the main hall. It was open, light streaming in. Against it she could see blurry silhouettes, the Umbrella team, guns held ready.

"Don't shoot! Run!" she screamed, hoping that they'd listen. She had no clue what they were armed with, how much damage they could do to her, but she knew it would be useless against the thing behind her.

They stepped back away from the door, whether they were listening to her or recoiling in horror at what was behind her didn't matter.

She rushed through the door and then recoiled herself.

She'd been wrong earlier, the weather had broken, sunlight was pouring in through the massive windows in the main hall.

The leech swarm slowed its pursuit, cautiously approaching the light, the grasping tendrils surrounding its mouth retracting, reducing its head to a blunt lump as it encountered the sunlight.

The Umbrella team was watching her. A different one than the first that she'd encountered, half a dozen members instead of three, all of them heavily armed and wearing body armor. One of them had grenades. They'd come ready for monsters.

She was as good as dead, but they hadn't opened fire on her yet.

There was still a chance.

"It's photosensitive," she yelled, hoping that in their shock they might listen to what she was saying rather than just kill her, "If we get it out here or outside it'll be easier to kill."

Marcus seemed to have realized the same thing and hadn't moved past the door. In fact, it looked like he was getting ready to back away from the light. She couldn't let that happen, the instant he stopped being a threat they'd kill her, or capture her and she'd end up nothing more than another monster in an Umbrella lab.

She took off her backpack and held it up, not sure how good the leech swarm's vision was and she had to be sure that it could see the pack was full. Catching onto her plan the leeches were abandoning it, clinging to her arms and hurrying to get under her jacket and out of the light.

"Marcus!"

The lump of its head swung towards her, tendrils starting to extend.

"You should have been more careful with your notes! I've got them here and we're going to use them for our own research!"

He was both insane and a monster, but he wasn't stupid. She had his attention, but he wasn't quite ready to take the bait.

"We'll be submitting a paper on the new species of leech we've discovered by the end of the year. I'll mention you in the acknowledgements."

That did it.

"THIEF!"

He lunged past the Umbrella team, focused only on her, his leeches shifting and rolling over each other to keep out of the light. Hers were doing the same thing, but for her it was confined to her hands and face. For Marcus, it was his whole body and since he was using the largest leeches to form his limbs, it meant that he was having a much harder time of things.

His legs retracted into his main body, creating a much more leech-like form that slithered towards her.

The Umbrella team made up their minds and opened fire.

She ran, following a path to the door that gave as many of her leeches as possible the chance to grab on as she ran past them.

One of the Umbrella operatives, turned to face her, her leeches giving her enough of a warning that she was able to dodge to the side before he could line up a shot.

Rolling out of the way, she pulled her camera out of her backpack, wrapped the cord she had it on around her wrist and then threw the backpack at him.

Papers exploded in all directions.

The flurry of movement managed to catch Marcus' attention and he lunged, knocking slamming into the Umbrella operative as he coiled protectively around the fluttering papers.

"MINE!"

The leech swarm writhed and flowed, falling in on itself before once again extending towards her.

It was a mistake on his part, focusing entirely on her, because it gave one of the Umbrella team the chance to do something, she had no idea what, all she knew was that there was a flash of light and Marcus reared back and slammed the man to the floor, so hard that leeches were sent flying in all directions from the force of the impact. Smoke began to fill the room and the leeches were fleeing from its source, regrouping around the man they'd killed and lunging at the next closest operative.

Some of the leeches tried to come after her, but not as a cohesive group and it was easy for her to avoid individual leeches. The main body of the swarm was focused on the soldiers, because they posed a far greater threat.

Taking advantage of the confusion, she ran, pulling her hood up as she emerged into the late afternoon sun. The extra leeches wiggled their way under her clothing.

Keeping her head down and her hands tucked into her sleeves, she jogged towards the railroad tracks. Once she got there she could hide if she needed to, otherwise it would be an easy enough walk back.

Behind her, she could hear the sounds of the fight, Umbrella operatives shouting and Marcus slamming into things.

In the distance, she heard the sound of a helicopter and ducked into the woods.

Watching the direction the noise was coming from, a black, military looking helicopter eventually came into view. It was unmarked in any way, but she suspected Umbrella. That was good though, it meant that there would be reinforcements coming to help the Umbrella soldiers fighting Marcus. They'd kill him, destroy his leeches and she wouldn't have to worry about that anymore.

There was no reason for her to feel guilty about how she'd left people to die, probably seen one killed right in front of her. They were the bad guys, working for Umbrella and they would have killed her if she stayed to try and help.

Never mind that, she'd been working for Umbrella too, when she was in S.T.A.R.S., and that she was a monster now.

Things had gotten far too complicated since she'd died.

Shuddering, she crossed her arms against her chest.

Leeches squirmed, trying to reassure her, but the only thing she could think of was what she must have looked like with a backpacks' worth the extra leeches hiding under her jacket, just sitting there, not even trying to blend in.

Getting back home was going to require some thinking.


	13. Almost There

Somehow, she'd managed to lose both the money she'd brought with her for bus fare and the keys to her apartment, and ended up needing to hitchhike once again and then walk the rest of the way home. By the time she got back to her apartment, it was late enough, or early enough, depending on how you looked at it, that she was too tired to care about her missing keys, solving the issue in a stroke of genius brought on by exhaustion. She sent a few leeches under the door and waited for them so climb up and unlock it, a task that they were able to complete, despite it taking them a while to figure out what they were supposed to be doing.

Once inside, she grabbed two cans of dogfood, staggered into the bathroom and opened them for the few leeches that she'd left in the apartment. The rest of her spares were waiting in the woods by the train tracks, carefully hidden away in a shallow puddle. She'd ordered them to stay put, but even if they started wandering there was only so far they could go. After she'd rested some, she'd go back and get them. There was a lot of work to be done, but she was more tired than she'd been since the start of it all. She didn't know if normal leeches slept, but it seemed that hers did, they just did it in shifts, and she'd kept so many of them active for far longer than anything they'd previously been through.

Both she and they were exhausted.

After pouring the dogfood into the bowls that she'd left in the bathroom, she turned on the tap and let the tub fill for the leeches. While she waited for the tub to fill, she stripped out of the clothing she'd been wearing. It was a mess, dirt and slime from the leeches clinging to it.

Sighing, she tossed it in the corner and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked fine, tired and with glossy patches on her skin where the slime coated her as well, but there were no other outward signs of what she'd been through. The leeches were once again in hiding.

Except for the ones that she'd left behind, they were circling anxiously around her feet, occasionally reaching out to brush against her.

Going straight to bed wasn't an option, not unless she wanted to make a mess of that too, and if the slime soaked through to the mattress, she had no idea how she'd ever manage to get it clean. She was going to have to shower first.

The leeches picked up on the idea and as tired as they were, she could still feel the excitement rippling through them. A shower, just long enough to wash the slime away and then she was going to bed.

In the end, she didn't even make it that far. Once she was clean, she let the tub fill, turned off the water and lay down. It was what the leeches wanted and they'd earned it. Besides, it was time she started trusting them.

Bit by bit she could feel her thoughts and body loose cohesion as, one by one, the leeches drifted off to sleep.

They had dreams, hazy and inhuman, but still there. Or maybe they were her dreams, her mind trying to reconcile countless different perspectives of the same events.

She woke up slowly, bit by bit. There wasn't even a clear point between waking and sleep, simply a gradient as more and more leeches became aware and began to work their way into position. Placement was based on differences in size and strength, slight enough that only the leeches were aware of them, though there was an element of thought and preference as well. Some jostling for favorite places occurred.

Eventually, there were enough of them in place that she was able to sit up, though her senses were still vague, sparing her the sight of countless leeches squirming over bone, working together to build her. Her broken arm was giving them a bit of trouble as they tried to figure out how to hold something together when it had previously been a stable source of support.

Much like she had instructed them on how to kill the zombies, she guided them into place so that they would bridge the break with their bodies, mouth holding onto one side of the break, tail sucker on the other. On their own, they tested to see if they should stretch out to allow more leeches to hold on or flatten themselves as much as they were able to increase each individual's area of contact.

In the end, they were successful in holding the broken ends together, but it still didn't feel quite right, uncomfortable for the leeches and she was aware of the instability, a feeling of weakness when she tested it that hadn't been there previously. She was going to have to fix that, but she had no clue where to start. Surgeons would use braces and pins to hold bad breaks in position to heal, but she didn't have access to anything like that. Besides, the break was never going to heal so whatever she did it would have to be a permanent solution. Jury-rigging something was a possibility, but that would still require tools and her tool kit was currently nothing more than a hammer, pliers and a pair of screwdrivers. Even if she'd had the tools she needed, probably a power drill, she'd still need to find screws made out of a metal that wouldn't corrode, and something to serve as a brace to hold the two sides of the break together. Marcus' leeches hadn't needed a skeleton, but she was a long way off from that.

Something fell into the tub with a small splash. Probably a leech sliding off the rim of the tub, since they'd been doing that since before she'd been awake. The feeling of falling was fun for them. Marcus hadn't believed her, but the leeches were playful, making her wonder what the difference was. Did it have to do with her leeches being a later generation, purpose bred to do what they'd done with her rather than an accident as they had with Marcus, or was it due to something about her? Was their seeming curiosity a reflection of her own curiosity, which had gotten her into all this trouble to begin with?

The thing that had dropped into the tub wasn't a leech. They'd dropped it in, but it wasn't one of them. The leeches that were still swimming nudged it over and bumped it against her hand until she picked it up. They wanted her to have it, but she wasn't quite picking up on why, just that it was complicated and important to them. Maybe it was a game that they were trying to explain to her.

Leeches squirmed as she blinked, willing her eyes to focus so that she could see what the leeches had brought for her.

A dead mouse.

Were they hungry?

She glanced over the side of the tub. Most of the dogfood was gone. Some of the first ones to have awoken must have started eating and bringing back food to the others. More importantly, she didn't feel any hunger, which meant enough of the leeches were full.

What was she supposed to do with a dead mouse?

The leeches wanted to eat it, but why had they given it to her instead of eating it themselves?

They tried to answer as best as they were able, a sense of happiness, excitement, the rats she'd fed them when they first hatched, a memory which thanks to their efforts to communicate with her the previous day was as strong as any of her own, mingled with the mechanics of her eating and a sense of reciprocity. Rats were comfort food to them, associated with happy memories, they understood that the act of eating was important to her.

They were trying to feed her.

"No," she laughed nervously, feeling like a crazy person talking to herself, "You eat it."

Slight puzzlement from the leeches. They understood that eating was important to her. Their understanding of her being separate from them mirrored her own understanding of that.

Was it really them, or was she projecting? Maybe she really was crazy, but did psychological concepts like dissociation really apply given her state?

The real crazy part of it was that she didn't need to talk to make the leeches understand, it just helped her deal with the situation. They were a part of her, albeit a part that moved and acted and ate on its own, and thinking of leeches acting on their own, she did need to go back and get the ones she'd left in the woods.

"Eat," she repeated, perhaps backing it with too forceful a thought. Instead of the unattached leeches eating the mouse, the ones making her hand, which were still working their way into position turned so that they were facing the mouse and began to chew.

She'd brought that upon herself and she knew it.

When the leeches finished eating, and enough of them were in place that their mottled brown and green bodies began to change colors, taking on the tones of human skin, she got out of the bath and began to get ready for the day.

It was going to be a long one, but nowhere near the ordeal of the previous day.

While she got ready, she turned on the television, just to see what was on the news.

Whatever ended up happening at the training facility hadn't ended up making it to the news, not that she expected it to happen. Umbrella was doing all it could to control the public's knowledge about what was going on. Even the cannibal murders weren't really being covered any more, though that made sense given it was old news by now, and if it was connected to Umbrella's zombies, the company would put effort into suppressing the story. Once she got the pictures she'd taken developed that would change though. Zombies and proof of Umbrella's experiments, she just wished that she'd been able to keep the documents that she'd gathered, but going back to the training facility was too risky. The team that had encountered her and fought Marcus had either reported what had happened or all been killed, either way it would mean that Umbrella would be sending in more people to figure out what had happened and what else might be in there.

Little as she liked it, that meant that she wasn't going to be able to go back there and see if the leeches she'd left behind had survived. They probably hadn't, but that didn't make giving up on them as a lost cause any easier. The leeches had been a part of her and without them she wasn't diminished in any way, but it was still frightening to think about. Somehow she'd gone from wanting to get rid of them to being worried about them, not the most surprising turn of events given what she knew about them now.

Umbrella might have eased up on the area surrounding what was left of the Spencer Estate though, so she might be able to get back there if she wanted to try and find more proof.

That seemed like a good idea, get the film developed and buy a new camera to get more pictures, so there was no room for doubt about what was going on.

So that was what she'd do first, drop the camera off at the nearest drugstore where they offered film developing. After that she could go and get the leeches back. She didn't like leaving them alone, but as long as they'd been out a few more hours wouldn't do any harm.

The drugstore was close enough that walking was the fastest way to get there, something that the leeches weren't too happy with, since her hooded jacket was too much of a mess for her to wear out and she didn't want to waste time washing it.

They squirmed a little to make their displeasure clear, but the trip was quick enough that it wasn't anything noticeable.

Inside the store, the leeches settled down slightly, though thanks to how dry the air was from the air conditioner running, she knew she'd have to hurry before the leeches started to dry out and get really uncomfortable. She could already feel it happening as she walked to the desk to drop off the camera, asking the clerk to see to it that the film was developed as quickly as possible. She was willing to pay extra if necessary. It had apparently been a busy week for amateur photographers and was told that the pictures would be ready in two or three days instead of the usual twenty-four hours that they offered. She left her phone number so that they could call her the moment the pictures were ready, and then hurried on her way, though not before noticing a display of back to school supplies near the door. Grabbing one of the few backpacks that wasn't adorned with cartoon characters, she paid for it and was on her way.

Back at her apartment, she had a drink of water and ran her arms under the tap to make the leeches feel better and wash away the bit of slime that had dried out during the trip. Between the sun and it not being as humid as she would have liked, it would be a tough trip to get the leeches back, but it was one that she was going to have to make. Leaving them where they were wasn't an option, not because she was worried about them getting hurt, but because she was concerned about what harm they could cause. Until she found out for sure, she was going to assume that they were capable of transmitting the Tyrant virus and treat them as being dangerous, though from what she'd seen it didn't seem that the virus was really all that contagious, requiring direct contact with infected fluids to be transmitted. If it had been capable of spreading through other means the city probably would have already been swarmed by zombies and infected wildlife.

Waiting until closer to night would have made things easier for the leeches, but it would also mean that she'd end up looking for the ones in the woods in the dark, which while doable, wasn't something she wanted to do. She'd had her fill of wandering around in the dark, especially when those leeches represented the last real loose end. Once she had them, it was just a matter of waiting for the pictures to be developed and then sending them to the media.

Doing the best she could with what she had, she put on a light blue hooded sweatshirt, lined the bottom of her new backpack with wet towels and headed out. It was still warm enough that how she was dressed got some stares, but the leeches were more sensitive to light than temperature and the color of the sweatshirt was light enough that overheating wasn't going to be a concern.

The leeches were more or less where she had left them, and it only took her about two hours to gather up all of them, impressive since she was looking for dozens of leeches in the woods, but it turned out that all she needed to do was sit and wait. They hurried back to her, full and happy and excited to rejoin her, and share what they'd experienced with the others. After the ones closest got back to her, she walked in slow circles, picking up the stragglers until she was confident she'd gotten them all.

What struck her the most about the situation was that they all uniformly wanted to be back with her, to the extent that instead of going into the backpack themselves, they traded places with the leeches that were a part of her. It was fascinating, though she got the distinct impression that they'd enjoyed their night in the woods, exploring and acting for the most part like normal leeches, it was also clear that they had no desire to live like that long term. Marcus had been right about the imprinting process and she'd continued to reinforce it by feeding them and keeping them comfortable as best as she was able. It was a relief to know and with the end in sight, she was willing to think about the long term for herself.

It was early September, still warm enough for the leeches to be comfortable, but eventually it would start to get cold and she'd need to figure out what to do when it did. She'd have to call Professor Rice for details on what leeches did over the winter. She knew they hibernated, but she wasn't sure if that was linked to daylight or temperature. She figured that it was temperature, but she wanted to be sure.

She hoped it was temperature, things would be so much easier that way. All she'd have to do was keep her apartment warm enough and not go outside unless she needed to.

In time she'd need to find a new job, which would likely present a challenge. She was young and her credentials really didn't look all that good on paper, having joined S.T.A.R.S. straight out of college, she didn't even have real experience in the lab or in the field, so a job related to her degree might be hard to come by. Then again, she'd be part of the group that exposed Umbrella for what it was, so that might help her. To help figure things out and maybe bring the others in once things got going, she'd have to call Barry, ask him for advice. She still had his number somewhere in the apartment and she was sure that he'd want to hear the good news. It was something they'd all need after what they'd been through.

She spent the whole bus ride and walk back to her apartment lost in thought.

The moment she was inside, she turned on the television to check the local news, watch all the nothing that was being reported. Nothing important at least, nothing about what had happened. That would all change by the end of the week, and terrifying as it might be, she'd be in the center of it.

She made her calls to Professor Rice and a few friends, just to help her relax, and then started trying to figure out the explanation she was going to send in with the pictures. Telling the whole story was tempting, but she had to be careful. There were so many parts that she couldn't share that sooner or later, someone was bound to notice the holes. It would be safer to send the pictures and a short note explaining what they were all about in as an anonymous tip. That would keep her out of the spotlight and keep her safe, until she figured out what to do with herself. Once the story broke, Chris, Jill and Barry would come forward, and maybe she wouldn't have to. She could stay out of sight and keep safe, let them be the heroes of the situation.

Because as much as she wanted to be a hero, she knew that they were much better suited for it. All she'd done was make mistake after mistake and muddle through things trying to set them right.

Instead of delivering the pictures herself, she'd mail them in to the local paper, explaining that they were taken in the Umbrella Training Facility and were proof of the experiments being conducted there. She kept it short and to the point, devoid of technical terms so that anyone reading it would be able to understand the key points, that Umbrella was manufacturing biological weapons and conducting human experimentation. All she had to do was get the ball rolling and let momentum take over. The truth would be revealed and Umbrella would fall.

For now it was just a matter of waiting, but she could do that. It wasn't like she'd be bored anyway, she still had to figure out what to do with the leeches over the winter and thinking of them, not all of the photos she'd taken were of zombies and what she'd seen at the training facility. There were a few that were of the leeches, mostly them doing normal things, but there were one or two of them hunting frogs in the ditch and eating together. When the film was done being developed she'd send those ones out to Professor Rice. After all that he'd done for her, she felt like she owed him something.


	14. Waiting

Her project for the day was a simple enough one, especially when compared to so much of what she'd already done, but it was still necessary. The leeches squirmed, ready to do what she needed them to, despite not quite understanding what she had planned. A loose half circle of them sat on the table, watching her, curious and wary. She didn't blame them, since she was nervous and uncertain as well. She'd gotten tired of the feeling the ends of her broken radius grinding against each other, and had decided that it had to be done. Try as she might to ignore it, the grinding that she could both feel and hear, it was impossible, especially when coupled with the feeling of wrongness that came from the leeches trying to hold the ends together. It wasn't painful, or even all that uncomfortable, it was just a matter of being aware of what the leeches were doing when they were normally unnoticeable.

It had been three days since she'd sent the pictures out and nothing terribly interesting had showed up on the news, or in the local papers yet. There had been a bit on how the Elliptical Express was still shut down, while the cause of its tragic accident was investigated. Oswell Spencer had allowed for a rare interview, where he commented about the unexpected difficulties Umbrella was facing and how, as of now, he had no plans to rebuild his Arklay estate. After that, Umbrella's stock took a slight dip and remained shaky, trending downwards, though analysists were confident it would recover. The fact that anything at all had appeared on the news was noteworthy, given how thoroughly Umbrella was managing to bury everything.

The lack of anything substantial wasn't a cause for concern, she figured that when her pictures and explanation finally reached the newspaper, the story would start local, a follow up to the cannibal murders. It might take a day or two for things to really blow up and go national.

She was trying to look on the bright side of things, especially considering what had happened at the training facility. As much as she wanted people to learn the truth about Umbrella, she didn't want it to be because Marcus and his leeches had gotten out, made it into the city and were attacking people as he attempted to find her. The Umbrella soldiers must have been able to kill him and dealt with any stray zombies in the area, which was a good thing, saving her the trouble of having to go back and wander in the woods looking for those zombies herself.

More importantly, despite the lack of actual news, people were noticing things. When she was on the bus, she heard people talking about the helicopters, wondering where they were from and why there were so many of them. Umbrella employees, ordinary men and women who just happened to work for the company were talking about new security procedures and minor annoyances that they had to deal with. There were issues higher up as well, there was a reason the company's stock value had gone down and was staying that way. People with enough money that they had to know something were growing wary. Ordinary employees were feeling the effects as well, complaining about new policies that seemed baffling to them.

It was heartening to overhear conversations like that as she traveled to and from the library. She was continuing her research, though now it was more to give her something to do than the hope that she might find something useful.

It was tempting to go back and see what was going on at the training facility, see if any of her leeches had survived, just to give herself something to do while she waited, but with what had happened, Umbrella had probably sent even more soldiers there to make sure absolutely nothing was left. They had to be learning from experience and the next group of soldiers she ran into might be ready to deal with something like her. On the other hand, that might have pulled some of them away from the remains of the mansion, so she might be able to go back there and see if she could find anything there. A lot more had been going on in the mansion, including the Tyrant project and some of the basement level labs had been fairly heavily reinforced, so there was the possibility that when the place blew up, something had been left behind.

Unless the explosion had been deliberate. Given the nature of what had been going on there, and how determined Umbrella was to keep that part of its research hidden, they might have had some sort of self-destruct process for the labs in the event of some catastrophic containment breach taking place. But that didn't make any sense either. There hadn't been any survivors to set it off by the time it had happened, and if it had been automated, she felt like it should have happened earlier, like before Alpha Team had even arrived. The only way for the explosion to have happened when it did was if there had somehow been another survivor, one who had come out after they'd left and triggered it, which didn't make sense. So it had to be a coincidence, which meant some of those labs might have survived. That was probably why Umbrella had teams of soldiers patrolling the area, to make sure no one got in while they salvaged what they could. It also explained why Spencer wasn't making plans to rebuild. He didn't want anyone in there until he had a way to hide what was going on.

If she had to, in the next few days she'd go check around the mansion, but until then she was going to relax and focus on small projects, like finally doing something about her broken arm.

She rested her arm on the table, staring at it, trying to prepare herself for what she had to do. For lack of any better ideas, she decided to try something simple first and had gotten a bottle of crazy glue when she went shopping yesterday. The worst thing that could happen with it was that the glue wouldn't hold and she'd have to try something else.

On the counter by the sink sat the carton of milk she'd bought yesterday. She hadn't been fast enough putting it away, and by the time she realized her mistake it was too late, several leeches had latched on and started drinking. Eventually, she was going to have to figure out a way to teach them not to drink from the carton. She was learning a lot from the books she'd been reading about animal training, but there was only so much about training things like dogs and cats that was applicable to her situation. The problem was, once they began the easiest thing to do was let them drink, rather than let the milk go to waste, so the behavior rewarded itself. They'd finished the milk overnight, so she should probably go over and throw the empty carton out.

She was procrastinating and she knew it, but given what she was putting off doing she figured it was forgivable.

One of the gathered leeches inched forward, nudging at the still unopened bottle of glue and knocking it over.

Putting it off was only making it worse, best to start and be done with thing.

She ran her fingers along her arm, testing where the break was and feeling the way the leeches had positioned themselves to try and hold the pieces together. As she examined the injury, the leeches faded into view, brown and green bodies pressed against each other to create the illusion of a seamless whole. Around the break, they were positioned differently, still managing to create a smooth surface, but in a less sturdy configuration. The leeches shifted position and began to move out of the way of her fingers, allowing her to see the bone itself. In any other situation, it would have been a nasty break, about halfway down the length of the bone, but in her case its position meant that it would be easier for her to fix. If it had been closer to the wrist, glueing it might have been more challenging, and any mistakes would have caused problems. As it was, if she didn't get things perfect it wouldn't matter, as long as it was sturdy.

The leeches let go of the bone, letting her pull out first one half, then the other and set them one the table. As soon as she took the second half out, the leeches repositioned themselves, pressed tightly against each other, their color changing until they were invisible. Without the radius, they had to position themselves differently, especially around her wrist, but she still had the full range of movement in that arm, in fact, it actually felt better to have the broken bone gone, a good thing, since it was going to be out for a while.

The pieces of bone were coated in slime from the leeches, and when she tilted one of the halves to get a better look at the break, a leech slid out of the hollow center. It didn't even startle her, which went to show how used to them she'd gotten. It was still disgusting, but it wasn't frightening. She didn't think that they'd ever stop being disgusting.

Before she could do anything with the bone, she was going to have to clean the two halves and let them dry. It was kind of creepy to leave it sitting next to the sink, seeing it next to plates and glasses in the dish drain, but it wasn't the first time she'd seen one of her own bones. There was her growing collection in the closet and the rib from her first misadventure in the woods.

Not really expecting there to be anything, she turned on the TV to watch the news. When it happened it was going to be in the papers first. She knew that the pictures she'd taken probably wouldn't be used in the article, at least not of the zombies, because they were way too graphic and the others weren't terribly interesting, except for showing the Umbrella logo, proving that the company was linked to the incident. She'd checked the papers every day since she'd sent the photos out, and figured that tomorrow would probably be the day. It would be interesting to see what the article would be like. Would it mention the zombies or just reference human experimentation and illegal bioweapons research? Only time would tell.

Just like she'd expected, there was nothing interesting on the news and she started to flip through the channels to see what was on, when the phone rang.

"Hello, Rebecca Chambers speaking," she answered with excessive formality, though it was only because she was never sure who'd be calling her anymore.

"It's good news!" It was Professor Rice. In a break from the usual pattern he was the one calling her, "I've finally managed to get my hands on one of the papers you wanted, not the exact article you mentioned, but an interesting one none the less. James Marcus was interested in some pretty strange things."

"I know," she cut him off, not really wanting to hear his opinions on Marcus, or having the heart to tell him that the papers weren't really necessary anymore. She was still glad he'd called though, because she'd been meaning to get in touch with him to figure out a plan for managing the winter with the leeches. That was the most long term planning she was going to do, and it wasn't really that long term with September nearly half way over, "A lot of what goes on with Umbrella is strange."

"You're not having second thoughts about that internship are you?" the Professor sounded concerned, "I mean with all the accidents lately I can understand, but it's still a great opportunity. It could line you up for a really good job when you graduate. Several former students of mine got jobs there."

"What internship?" she asked, then realized that she'd been vague enough about what she was doing that it was an easy enough mistake for Professor Rice to have made, "I'm done with school and I really don't want to work for Umbrella because…"

This was her chance, tell him a story of her own, the whole story of what had happened to her and the others. He might even believe her and she had been considering trying to arrange it so that he was the one overseeing the study of her leeches, if it came to that.

"Oh, right, of course," he interrupted, "I remember now, you're taking a year off before grad school. Taking the chance to do your own thing for a bit. I can understand that."

"Speaking of my own thing," she paused as she looked into the kitchen and saw a leech climbing over the dishes in the dish drain, getting too close to the bones for comfort. At her mental reprimand it backed away and slid onto the counter, "I don't know if you've gotten them yet, but I sent you some photos of the leeches."

"Really? I'm looking forward to seeing them. Depending I might be able to help you identify them," he sounded happy enough at the change in topic.

"I think they might have been European medical leeches at one point," she replied, "But whatever they are now, they're different. The ones in the pictures look pretty ordinary. They're still juveniles, a month and…"

She trailed off as she started counting days. It had been over a month. She'd been dead for nearly two months and it had been the busiest span of time in of her life. She'd done things she'd never imagined herself capable of and she was dead. Except, Marcus had been adamant that she wasn't. She didn't know and wasn't sure if it even mattered, because she'd mostly come to terms with it.

"So they're still small," Professor Rice interjected when she took too long responding, "Was there any reason you couldn't get photos of the adults?"

His tone implied that he suspected there was an interesting story behind it. He loved stories and boy did she ever have one.

"The adults are…were…hard to locate since…" How much did she want to tell him? Not much, at least not yet. It was a topic to ease into, figure out how much she could safely say as she went, "You're going to think I'm crazy, but the adults are aggressive. You know how I said they're active predators? The ones in the pictures I sent you are working together to hunt frogs. I've also got a few pictures of just one of the leeches stretched out to its full extension next to a ruler, to show you just how big they are, and one picture of its mouth. You can really see its teeth in that one and they're a lot bigger than those of an ordinary leech. With the adults, I didn't really get the chance to look too closely because… I don't think they have just three teeth. They've got the three main ones, but a bunch of smaller ones too. And the leeches in the pictures I sent, don't worry about them being too small to make out much detail. As big as they are, you'd think that they were adults."

Professor Rice was silent for a long while, taking in all that she'd told him. When he finally spoke, his usual good humor was heightened by anticipation, "You know, I'm looking forward to seeing these pictures, especially if they really do show this group hunting behavior you've been telling me so much about. Your leeches and your interest in James Marcus have been a delight. The papers he wrote were fascinating, if the one I'm sending to you is anything to go with. All methodical and well thought out, but the directions he goes in at the end. If everything else wasn't perfectly sound, it would be unbelievable. Well, a good portion of his speculation is unbelievable, but I'll give him that. The paper I found was written when he was quite young, and young people tend to latch onto the strangest ideas, which Marcus seemed to have attempted to tie into his work. I don't want to leave you biased before you read it, but I will say that there's likely good reason it's so hard to find his work, and why he stopped publishing once he founded Umbrella."

"Eugenics?" she asked, remembering the sensationalist allegations she'd read about in her research on the history of Umbrella. Those seemingly outrageous claims had nothing on what was actually going on with the company, "Because that's not at all shocking compared to some of what's going on."

"Ah, with all the research you've clearly done, I should have known that you'd know," he laughed at his assumptions, "But you say going on? As in currently happening? Now you've got me curious. As a local, you probably know more about what's going on in Raccoon City than I do, and I'm genuinely interested in what the situation there looks like to you."

"Bad," he'd given her the opportunity and she was going to take it, "Umbrella is doing…something that it's trying to hide."

If only she'd saved some of her zombie photos so she could send them to him, but that couldn't be helped.

"Really?"

She could imagine him leaning forward in his chair as he asked.

"Really," reflex rather than necessity made her take a deep breath, causing the leeches to squirm uncomfortably, before she continued, "I sort of worked for the company for a while, without really knowing it. I was hired right out of college, got the letter in the mail before the school had even sent out my copy of my diploma. It was too good a chance to pass up, even if the details were kind of vague. I jumped on it, because the pay was good and it was a chance to get to Raccoon City, headquarters of Umbrella. I figured that it would only be temporary, that eventually I'd apply for a job with Umbrella and work there as a researcher. If I couldn't get a job with Umbrella, I'd keep working and save up the money to do grad school and then try again. I was part of …"

Did she tell him that she was a member of S.T.A.R.S.? No, he wouldn't believe her. As young as she was, he kept forgetting that she wasn't still in school and she couldn't blame him. Not even in her twenties and she'd been hired as part of a private security team. That sort of thing didn't happen.

"I was part of a group doing some fieldwork," it was the safest way for her to phrase things, "I can't really go into too much detail, because…"

"They made you sign a nondisclosure agreement and the results aren't out yet," Professor Rice finished for her, "I know about that sort of thing, the labs on campus are always looking for students to be part of test groups or to do grunt work. Every so often, we get fliers posted on campus by outside research groups looking for volunteers. Most of them are fine, but I've heard that some of them will look for any excuse not to pay up, so don't worry."

It was better than any explanation that she could have come up with, so she was willing to go with it, "My boss had implied that he might be able to get me a job with Umbrella if I stuck it out, so I tried. The thing was, he'd been working for them all along and none of us found out until it was too late. We were just part of a side project, expendable and only there to test…"

She had to stop to gather her thoughts, keep from crying. She felt like she should have been, but the leeches' mimicry, while good, wasn't that good. What she was saying felt like a confession, her admitting that she'd been a part of something horrible, but at the same time trying to explain that she hadn't known. Because she hadn't. If she had known the truth, she never would have taken the job, never would have moved to Raccoon City and she still would have been alive. Everyone else might have been dead though, and Director Marcus might still have been out there. She wasn't going to pretend that she'd made even the smallest amount of difference with what happened with Captain Wesker, other than maybe he would have shot Chris instead if she hadn't been there, but that wasn't saying much.

"Something you can't talk about, because of the terms you had to sing when you joined," Professor Rice finished for her, "I'm going to guess it was some sort of psychology study. I've had students tell me stories about them. There was one a few years back that was so bad that the campus Greek organizations drew inspiration for hazing from it."

Trust Professor Rice to come up with a story to try and match what she'd been telling him. She knew that he was mostly a stranger, someone she'd never met and likely never would, but he was the closest thing she had to a friend right now, the one person she'd told anything about what was going on. Not breaking down and telling him the whole truth was a struggle, but she knew it was too unbelievable, and in addition to being a friend, he was a valuable source of information. She didn't want to risk losing that. Chief Irons' dismissal of her story still stung and had made her all too aware of how crazy it sounded. If only she'd kept some of the photos she'd taken of the zombies, then she could have sent him one as well, with an explanation of what it was he was looking at. Not only would it be a good setup for her to tell him her real reason for needing information on leeches, it would mean that another person knew the truth about Umbrella.

"In the next batch of photos I send you, I won't just have better pictures of leeches," because she'd intended to send him more anyway, "I'll make sure to get some that show what Umbrella's been up to and please, those former students you mentioned a while back, the ones that work for the company, talk to them. Ask them if they've noticed anything strange, and warn them that bad things are happening. I can't give you too much information, not now at least, but I'll send you a letter explaining things with the photos."

She just had to hope that she'd be able to follow through on that. It would mean going back into the woods. She'd try for the remains of the mansion this time, to make sure there were no zombies around it, maybe get a few pictures of the soldiers if there were any, and find out if there was anything left, like evidence that the explosion had been deliberate.

"Alright," the Professor gave a conspiratorial little laugh, "I'll call you and tell you what I think as soon as that first batch of photos arrive, or you can call me when you get the papers I sent you, whichever comes first. You do know that this is starting to get strange though, like something out of an old spy thriller or something, maybe a science fiction movie. Eusocial leeches and corporate espionage. Not at all what I'd imagined when you first called me for advice. If this turns out to be some sort of elaborate hoax, I hope you don't mind that I share it with my colleagues. It's too good a story not to share."

They talked for a little longer after that, about how to best keep the leeches happy over the winter and other, unimportant things, while she tried to hide her disappointment that he thought she might be leading him on. She wasn't though, and soon enough he'd have the pictures that showed that at least the leeches were real.

After they said their goodbyes, she went back into the kitchen to check on the bone. The two pieces were dry and ready to be glued.

Getting them back together turned out to be surprisingly easy and, several hours later, when she put the bone back into place, she was pleased to find that she couldn't feel anything out of the ordinary. It was a good thing to know, that crazy glue worked to fix damaged bones, though she hoped that she wouldn't ever have to put that knowledge to use again.


	15. Finally

Things hadn't played out like she'd expected. The photos she'd sent into the newspaper either hadn't arrived, or her story had been too unbelievable and they were ignored. Either explanation made more sense than believing that somehow Umbrella had prevented the story from running, because there had to be limits to its influence. She wasn't going to let that get to her though, because she was going to play things safe with the new set of photos, the ones that she'd picked up from the drugstore earlier that day. Instead of sending them into the paper, she was going to do like she'd promised and send them all to Professor Rice.

There were pictures of the leeches of course, most of them carefully staged to show off different unusual aspects of their morphology. Plenty of close-ups of their head ends to show their eyes and teeth, and a number of them working together to get food in various situations that proved cooperation. The photos of them forming a bridge with their own bodies to get to a bowl of cat food sitting on a plate of salt had been especially nerve wracking. They understood that the salt was dangerous, because she knew it would hurt them, but holding the camera and waiting while they banded together, stretching out to latch onto the rim of the food bowl had been frightening. She'd kept a glass of water nearby to wash any that came into contact with the salt, but she wasn't sure if it would be enough. The thing was, it was the best way she could think of to show their intelligence and the way they worked together. Not only were they teaming up so that others could get to the food, they were avoiding a dangerous obstacle. She hoped that Professor Rice would be impressed by those pictures.

His comments on the first ones she'd sent had been encouraging. He'd agreed that their teeth were larger than normal and far more abundant, lining up with them being predators more than scavengers or parasites, but what had impressed him the most were their eyes. Apparently, they weren't just larger and better developed, the one leech whose head end she'd taken a picture of had unusually positioned eyes, probably because of the second set being twice the size of the others. He remained skeptical about their working together, saying that what was shown in the pictures with the frog could easily be coincidence caused by large numbers in a confined area. That was why she'd staged the photos with the salt and cat food, to show him beyond any doubt that they were cooperating. Otherwise, he'd been very enthusiastic, saying that he couldn't wait to see more. She'd tried to be similarly enthusiastic about the paper he'd sent her, but it wasn't anything new, just an ordinary enough study of differences in feeding behavior in two otherwise very similar species of African leeches. Its publication date lined up with the trip he, Spencer and Ashford went on to Africa and the way it was written lined up with what she knew about him. In fact, some of the conclusions he'd drawn about speciation hinted that the Marcus she'd encountered had been, in terms of personality, completly true to the original.

There weren't just photos of leeches though. She hadn't managed to make it all the way to the ruins of the mansion, because navigating through the woods was a lot more difficult than following train tracks, but she had managed to get a few good pictures of the one zombie she had encountered during her three days of trying, as well as a set of pictures of a group of ten soldiers standing around the remains of something. At the time, she'd been more focused on avoiding being seen than taking good pictures, but in one of them the Umbrella logo, or at least the shape and colors, were visible on their uniforms. She would have liked to get a shot of whatever it was that they were looking at, something they were calling a 'hunter', but she didn't want to get too close, and the way they were standing made it hard to see much of anything, as they put the thing into a heavy blue bag and carried it off in the direction of the Spencer Estate.

They'd been focused enough on the hunter that they never noticed her. The fact that the replacement jacket she'd gotten for herself was camouflage patterned also helped, because there was no sense in relying on the leeches alone.

She hadn't told Professor Rice about those pictures, figuring that seeing them along with the explanation she sent would be far better than her trying to describe things.

He'd given her another project as well, one that she was trying to decide how to approach. He really wanted to get his hands on a specimen of one of her leeches and she had no idea how to respond. She'd lost enough at the mansion that she was hesitant to sacrifice any of them, especially when she wasn't sure if she should try to send it alive or dead. Dead would be safer, but that would mean killing it before she sent it and even then, if it carried the Tyrant virus she wasn't sure how to warn Professor Rice about it, because that would be the goal if she sent one to him, to have it determined whether or not it carried the virus. It was something that could be put off until she sent him the new pictures and an explanation of what Umbrella was doing. That way, at least she'd be able to try and explain the virus to him, and maybe they could work together to figure out a way to get a leech tested for it, then she'd agree to send one to him. Until then, all she could do was wait.

A few days back, she wasn't sure how many exactly, she'd decided to call Barry. Thanks to the schedule she was keeping, they were starting to blend into each other again, with sleeping during the day on any day where she didn't plan to go out, and only waking up to answer the phone, and then reading and watching television all night or working with the leeches to get the pictures she needed for Professor Rice. She'd figured that she'd call to check in and let him know that she was mostly all right and doing what she could to help, except the number turned out to have been disconnected. She checked in the phonebook to see if maybe, somehow, she'd gotten the number wrong, but it was correct.

Just to give herself something to do, and to keep from imagining worst case scenarios, she followed through by doing a little investigating, calling a cab and going to his house. Immediately, the answer became apparent, there was a sale sign in the yard and a quick conversation with a neighbor, who was out working in their yard, revealed that the Burtons had packed up and moved away practically overnight.

Rebecca couldn't blame Barry for that, he had a family to worry about and it made sense that keeping them safe would take priority over stopping Umbrella. She was doing what she could and there was also Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, who were bound to be doing something. She'd even tried to look them up, but both of them had unlisted phone numbers.

So she was on her own, but she'd been on her own since the start and she'd come a long way.

Once she finished the letter she was going to send with the photos, she'd get some rest. The mail truck had already come by, so it wasn't like there was any reason for her to hurry. She could finish the letter, stay up late, or early, to proof read it and then send it and the photos out. It was probably paranoia, but she didn't want to leave the envelope in the mailbox overnight. There was no reason to suspect anything, but after what had happened with the first set of photos, she wanted to take every possible precaution, besides, it made her feel better.

And thinking of things that had her feeling good, it was a lovely evening, not too dry out, meaning that she could have the windows open. There wasn't even a breeze, which in the past would have made the apartment feel stuffy, but it was something the leeches enjoyed. Having the window open so she could listen to the sounds outside was something she enjoyed, so it was a win-win situation.

Putting down the draft of the letter she was working on, she went to check if the leeches needed food. Regular feeding and careful training had helped stop them from wandering. They still did it, hunting for rats in the walls when they got bored, but not nearly as often as they had previously. That, coupled with their diminished numbers, made keeping them hidden less of a concern. They hadn't managed to cause any trouble yet, so it was easy to think that the trend would continue. She was still going to check in on them though, just to be sure.

There was still food in the bowl, and the majority of them were swimming lazy circles of the bathtub or clinging to the sides. Just to make them happy, she turned on the shower and spent several minutes watching them play under the falling water. That was something she had yet to tell Professor Rice about, that they were playful, but when she spoke with him after he'd seen the new photos she'd tell him about it. Unlike Marcus, he had no biases of his own and would be more likely to listen. She wasn't sure how she'd prove it to him, if she needed to, but it would be interesting to talk about, to see if he had any input on the matter. It was a silly thing and she knew it, but their being playful was important to her, making them slightly more relatable and marginally less horrible for it.

A few of the leeches making her slipped away, trading places with the others to eat. Not too many of them were hungry yet, but enough were, that getting herself something to eat felt like a good idea. Then she could go back to her letter, read it over and decide if she was ready to start writing out the final draft of it. Normally, she wasn't so careful with letters, but this was the most important one she'd ever written, more important than even her application to college. Letting it sit for a while would help and later, she could come back to it with a clear head and make sure that it contained everything she needed it to and nothing more.

There was leftover pizza in the fridge, because yesterday she'd decided to treat herself for no reason at all, other than that the weather had been hot and dry and she hadn't felt like cooking anything for herself. The delivery place wasn't too far away, and the short wait and however many dollars it had cost had been worth it. She'd gotten used to not being able to taste anything, enough that she was able to enjoy the texture of the food, which now presented an interesting problem. She loved cold pizza, but the leeches preferred food that was warm, or at least at room temperature. How much would their discomfort detract from her own enjoyment of the meal? Reheating it seemed the safest course of action, but since she was eating food for texture rather than taste now microwaving it wouldn't work.

The thought of food had gotten the attention of the dozen or so leeches crawling over last night's dishes in the sink, and they emerged to sit on the counter and watch her expectantly. The leeches had a sort of hierarchy of value for foods, with dogfood being nothing exceptional, cat food a special treat, mice and rats were a favorite, and anything that she wanted to eat always held the highest place. They hadn't particularly cared for the pizza, but because she planned on eating it, the slice she'd put on the counter was suddenly the most interesting thing imaginable. Not interesting enough to eat cold, but interesting enough that they surrounded the plate it was on, watching it like they were afraid it might get away.

At least they weren't trying to drag it into the sink. They tended to do that with any food that they didn't like fresh. They'd let it sit in the water for a while to see if they liked it any more once it got soggy, and if there wasn't any standing water in the dishes in the sink they'd turn on the tap. It was something they did regularly and she was working on figuring out a way to get them to turn it off on their own as well. The last thing she needed was an obscene water bill because of them, especially when she still hadn't started looking for a job.

Eventually, it was something that she'd have to figure out, because the funds in her checking account were starting to get low enough for her to worry. If she needed to, she could dip into her savings, or, in a worst case situation, call her parents for help with the bills, but that would mean explaining to them why she needed the money and she still hadn't told them that she didn't have a job anymore.

Because that would mean explaining a lot of other things, things that weren't worth dwelling on.

In the interest of actually enjoying lunch, or dinner, or whatever meal the pizza was going to be, she'd reheat it in the oven. At least that way it wouldn't get soggy.

Wrapping it in aluminum foil, she put it in the oven, because not long after moving into the apartment and getting used to having an actual kitchen, she'd figured out that the best way to reheat things like pizza was to put it in and let the oven warm up, and then wait a few minutes. It didn't heat things perfectly, but it was faster than waiting for the oven to preheat.

While she waited, she heard a siren in the distance. An ambulance, but there was a dispatch center about ten blocks away, so when she had the windows open it was something she heard at least once a day, usually more. At first, she'd jumped every time she heard the sirens, but now she was used to it, accepting it as just another part of life in the big city.

Carefully taking the pizza out of the oven, she put it on the table to wait for it to cool. The leeches on the counter were curious, but in no hurry. They were smart enough to know that anything straight out of the oven was too hot for them, even if they were interested in what it was.

It was strange, somehow, though the connection with them worked two ways, they tended to pick up a lot more from her than she did from them, unless she was actively concentrating. It wasn't a bad thing, she'd go crazy if she was constantly aware of what every leech was doing or thinking, but she wished that they weren't constantly picking up on so much from her. Being able to eat even one meal in peace, without a swarm of leeches gathering would have been nice.

A day without sirens would also have been nice, this time it was police and in a different direction. Then again, it was the start of fall and people tended to act crazy when the summer ended, but the weather was still hot. She could hear car horns honking nearly constantly and someone was just holding theirs down in a single continuous blast, a little late for rush hour, but if there was a bad enough traffic jam somewhere, it might go on for a while longer, because that was how September went.

In another week or two, things would probably calm down, or get worse, depending on how quickly things happened once Professor Rice received the letter. It would be a test run, once she'd talked to him, they could come up with a plan together for how to spread the news. He'd probably have to do most of the work at first, he was a professor and therefore an authority figure. Even if he was talking about something outside of his area of expertise, people would listen to him.

The pizza was cool enough to eat now and –

Was that a firetruck?

If this kept up she was going to have to close the window.

Another firetruck joined the noise, and then another. It was hard to be sure, but it sounded like one of them was heading in her direction.

"Don't touch it," she warned the leeches as she left her pizza on the table to go and close the window. In the distance, she could see smoke.

It looked like part of downtown was on fire.

A large part.

The leeches could have the pizza, there was more in the fridge anyway, and she wanted to know exactly what was going on. Whatever it was, it was far enough away that her building wouldn't be evacuated, probably. She'd never seen a fire that big and she wasn't sure how things like that happened.

Leaving the window open so she could listen to what was happening outside, she turned on the television. It was already on the local news channel, and a reporter was broadcasting live from the site of the action. Rebecca could see firemen hurrying by in the background. The man was talking about how emergency response teams were overwhelmed. Over a dozen car accidents, including one where a bus had smashed into the side of a building, had ambulance crews overwhelmed and that the fire department's heavy rescue team was stuck at a bus, having somehow ended up surrounded by rioters. No one knew what had set off the riots.

Leaning to get a better look out the window, Rebecca watched the smoke in the distance. The wind was blowing it away from the apartment building, so she probably wouldn't need to evacuate, even if it spread. That was a relief, if there was rioting in the streets the last thing she wanted to do was somehow end up caught in it.

The reporter had moved on to talking about the fire, how no one was sure how it started and until the firefighters got things under control, there was no way to even be certain which building it had started in. They were willing to speculate that faulty wiring was the cause, since a department store in what was roughly the center of the blaze had been undergoing renovation at the time. It was going to take some time though, because of the traffic jams throughout the city, due to all the car accidents that had yet to be cleared away.

Over the noise of the sirens, both on the television and outside, she heard something, a familiar sound that took her a moment to place.

Gunfire.

Closing the window and turning up the volume on the television, she waited.

The news reporter was no longer talking into his microphone, instead he was having a frantic discussion with his crew. When the discussion ended he looked visibly shaken.

"Jeff here," he gestured helplessly towards the camera, "Says that sound we're hearing isn't from the fire. He says someone's shooting a gun. We're going to…give me a minute."

He waved at one of the firefighters, trying to call him over, but the firefighter hurried past, shouting something as he went.

"What?" the reporter sounded incredulous, "You must have misheard."

The firefighter shook his head, gestured emphatically, then walked off camera.

"Can I repeat that on air?" the reporter shouted after him, "Can I quote you?"

Either he agreed, or the reporter didn't care.

"They're leaving, a team on the opposite side of the blaze was attacked by the rioters. They've lost contact with them and it's been decided that it's too risky for them to stay in the area," the reporter flinched at a new volley of gunfire, "And they just got a call in from the heavy rescue team. Police officers showed up to attempt to disperse the rioters and the officers were dragged from their cars and… What?"

The camera turned away from the reporter, the image going blurry as the cameraman tried to focus on something in the distance. Someone was staggering out of the smoke, barely able to stand.

A firefighter rushed towards them, ready to help.

They fell, dragging the firefighter to the ground with them.

The two of them rolled around, the firefighter trying to help them to their feet as they frantically grabbed at his jacket.

Except, something was horribly wrong. She couldn't put her finger on it, but the leeches could sense it as well. The ones in the kitchen were slithering towards her and she could even feel the ones in the bathroom starting to gather into a swarm. All they knew was what she knew, but they were picking up on her fear.

More people were staggering out of the smoke, converging on the firefighter.

They fell on him in a swarm.

Zombies.

There were zombies in the city.

She wasn't sure how long she spent staring at the television, long enough that the live report came to an abrupt end and it went back to the studio. The reporters all seemed at a loss, alternating between reading what was on the teleprompter and wondering about the fires, now burning out of control, and the rioters, also out of control.

Rioters, they'd kept saying rioters, but it was zombies.

Zombies.

In the city.

Umbrella couldn't hide this.

The truth was going to come out, except…

She hadn't wanted it to happen like this. She'd never even imagined that it would play out this way. Umbrella had seemed too big, too unstoppable. They'd had soldiers roaming the woods, managed to suppress all evidence of their involvement in anything, they'd even managed to kill director Marcus and put pressure on Chief Irons to make him disband S.T.A.R.S. and prevent the survivors from telling their stories. It was too well organized for something like this to have happened.

Except, Captain Wesker.

If there had been one traitor, why wouldn't there be more, someone who instead of working for Umbrella decided to work against it? A competing company, a foreign power, anything.

It might even have been a simple accident. There was no way to know and it didn't matter.

Once again, she had to do something, but what?

She was safe from normal zombies, so she didn't have to worry about them. The fires on the other hand, if the wind changed direction they might spread to her apartment building.

Out in the hall, she heard a door open, someone was knocking on a door several doors down from her.

The knocking stopped, there was quiet conversation and then the knocking started again on a closer door.

She went to her door and glanced out the peephole to see what was going on.

The woman who lived at the end of the hall and worked nights was going from door to door, waiting for someone to answer and talking to them or moving on.

Rebecca opened her own door.

"What's going on?"

At almost the same time the woman spoke to her, "Are you watching the news?"

"Yes, were you?" Rebecca asked, already knowing the answer and feeling relief that she wasn't alone in this anymore. Even if she didn't know the woman's name, she was someone.

"Yes," the woman nodded gravely, "Do you have a way out of here?"

Until now she'd never spoken with the woman long enough to notice that she had an accent, one she couldn't place.

"I…what do you mean?" Rebecca wasn't sure how to respond to a question like that.

"Out of the city," the woman shrugged, "Because this sort of thing is never good. Help might come quick, or it might not. If you hurry and are careful you can avoid the riots, but they're moving towards us."

The woman sounded like she had a plan, one that Rebecca was willing to go along with, "I don't have a car, but we can walk. They don't move that fast and if we don't stop we can get out of the city and from there we can – "

"Don't worry about what to do next," the woman cut her off, her accent growing thicker as she spoke, worry creeping into her voice, "Just get out of the city. Figure out the rest when you're safe. I have to wait for my daughter to call or get home. I'm not going without her unless… You just go, I can warn everyone else in the building and then if Anna hasn't called…"

The woman shrugged helplessly and moved down to the next door to repeat the conversation.

Just like that Rebecca was on her own again, needing to come up with her own plan as the woman continued down the hall, warning anyone who would listen.

First things first, she had to get the leeches, because she wasn't leaving them behind.

Into her backpack they went, along with two thermoses of water, because she didn't know how long she'd be out for. She put on her jacket, again because she didn't know how long she'd be out for, and didn't want to get caught out in the sun if she was still outside the next day.

Just to be safe, she grabbed her purse, what money she had laying around and the largest kitchen knife she owned. There was no telling what she'd encounter out there and she wanted to be ready for anything. She wasn't though, and she knew it, but having the knife was better than being unarmed all together. Against zombies, the leeches would help her, but she didn't want to rely on them.

On her way out, she passed the woman again, who looked at her, looked at her backpack and nodded in approval. Rebecca nodded back.

That silent exchange was their last and as she left the apartment building, Rebecca considered how she still didn't even know the name of the woman and probably never would. They'd lived down the hall from each other and until tonight, the most they'd ever said to each other was 'hello'.

Out of habit, Rebecca turned and started walking to the bus stop the moment she was outside. She could take a bus to…

Nowhere, the buses wouldn't be running at a time like this, and even if they were, they'd be full of people in the same situation as her. If one did stop, it'd be standing room only and the last thing she needed was to be bumping into people in a confined space when she was carrying a backpack of leeches that probably carried the Tyrant virus. Especially anxious Tyrant virus infected leeches, leeches that she was also made of.

She stopped in her tracks, orienting herself and trying to figure out the fastest way to a main road. If she made it the highway, she could just start walking and fall back on her usual strategy of hitchhiking. She'd go to a rest stop, call her parents on a payphone, because by then they were sure to be worried about her, and take things from there.

That was the extent of her plan now, get out of Raccoon City and call home.

It was a good plan, on about the same level as all the plans she'd come up with lately and those had worked.

Except for the times when they hadn't.


	16. Getting Through the End

**Notes:** Sorry it took so long. This was a big one and as such took quite some time to proofread. To everyone who's read this, thank you so much! I hope that you enjoyed my strange and horrific little story.

o0o

When she walked back past the apartment building, she nearly stopped and went back in when she realized that she'd left her collection of all the little bones she'd lost. Leaving them behind felt wrong, but there was no point in taking them, and the idea of walking around with a bunch of bones in her backpack, albeit her own bones, wasn't a very smart one. There was no reason that anyone would ever know, but there was no reason for her to bother with them.

She'd worry about it later, when she came back to the city to get her belongings after everything cleared up. It would take time, but she'd get them back. Then she'd figure out what to do with them long term. She'd been meaning to figure out a better hiding spot than a box in the closet, but there hadn't been time.

It was something she could worry about later, when there was time.

The chaos hadn't quite reached where she was yet, but it was close. The streets were full of cars with nowhere to go, and people shouting and angrily honking their horns. There were surprisingly few people on the sidewalks, and those that were carried suitcases and backpacks and bags just like her.

Except, they were different from her in countless small ways. The majority of them wore dazed expressions, as they struggled to haul overly large suitcases and too many bags, others traveled lighter and moved with rapid, nervous purpose. A small, but noticeable number of them moved cautiously, keeping a hand in their pocket or against their side on something hidden by loose clothing. She wasn't as good at reading body language as some of the other S.T.A.R.S. members, but she could recognize the look, one that so many of her teammates had possessed. These people were people with plans, they knew what they were doing and would make it out of the city. A good number of them were leading their families, which made her think of Barry. He'd known something was coming and gotten his family out just in time.

Most of the people she passed were simply walking with no destination, other than away. Some were even going in, what she thought of as, the wrong direction, back towards the fire and chaos and zombies, not that any of them knew about the zombies. Not yet at least. That would likely change before the night was over, but she had no way of warning them. If she said anything, they'd just dismiss her as crazy. Better to keep walking and focus on getting away. She took the bus all over the city, enough that she had a fairly good idea of where she was going. A map would have helped, but she didn't own any street maps, just ones of the woods, because until tonight she'd been able to rely on public transportation.

As if in response to her thought, she saw a bus ahead, stuck in the middle of an intersection where the cars were too tightly packed for anyone to get out of the way. Even if they'd been willing to try backing up, the cars behind them would keep them in place, with more and more gathering behind, drivers unaware of what was ahead of them.

Farther on, she stopped to orient herself, looking at street signs and buildings.

Until two months ago, she'd passed all of them every day, but that was as a passenger on a bus. She hadn't paid much attention then, letting it all turn into a blur as she let her thoughts wander. Walking was different, a different, slower point of view, where she had to remember which way to turn and what street to take, rather than it happening automatically, as someone who knew what they were doing drove her to wherever she was going.

Until recently, she hadn't really considered how heavily she and everyone else relied on other people, but even in her determination to deal with things on her own, she'd sought out others, friends and acquaintances from college, people who knew what they were doing like Professor Rice, Barry in the end, when it was too late and he'd already left. Now, she really was on her own.

The leeches in her backpack squirmed, as though to remind her that alone wasn't really a thing for her anymore. They were always there.

The window of the car she was standing next to rolled down, the woman in the passenger seat smiling reassuringly at her, "Hey, you look lost."

"Just thinking," Rebecca replied, "Trying to figure out if I'm going the right way. I'm not used to walking."

That wasn't true, not exactly, she'd gotten very used to walking, just through the woods.

The driver, the woman's husband judging by the twin boys, Rebecca could see fidgeting in the backseat, leaned over, "Do you want a ride?"

"I – " she nearly took him up on the offer, her hand was actually on the car door when she looked, really looked at things. The streets were packed with cars, none of them moving. A few drivers had even come to the same realization that she had, and were getting out and abandoning their cars, adding to the problem, "No, I'm fine. I just…"

She trailed off looking at things, really looking. For two months, she'd been working to stop Umbrella, waffling back and forth between trying to be a hero and being terrified of taking on that kind of responsibility. Now, she had a chance to actually do something, something small, but still something.

The leeches clinging to her ribs squirmed in anticipation of her taking a deep breath, nearly making her laugh with how perceptive they were. They didn't just respond to her thoughts, they knew her.

"It's alright, you're going the same way we are," the husband reassured and then turned to the two children, "Move over guys, give the girl some room so she can get in."

"No," Rebecca repeated, trying to sound more confident than she was, "It's not going to work. If you want to get out of here, walking's the best bet. How long have you been stuck here?"

"About half an hour, but traffic's bound to start moving soon," the woman reassured, "We'll just wait it out."

Her husband grimaced, but said nothing looking to be in actual, physical pain as he stared at the traffic ahead.

Gunshots rang out somewhere behind them. Rebecca thought that it sounded like a pistol, something small, but anything more than that was beyond her. She didn't know guns. Back in S.T.A.R.S., she'd barely been competent enough to manage her own weapons. On the range, she'd given all the members of Alpha and Bravo a good laugh when she forgot about recoil being a thing and…

"We're safer in the car," the husband said grimly. Turning to Rebecca, he gave her a worried smile, "Are you sure you don't want a ride?"

Realizing that there was nothing more for her to say, or do, she shook her head and went back to walking. Turning back to look at the couple in their car, as well as all the other people in their cars, she hoped that she was the one who was wrong.

Only time would tell.

For now, they were all stuck, waiting.

The only reason she'd left her apartment in the first place, was because of how close the fires were. Finding a place to wait things out seemed like a good idea. Waiting for help was always safe, just like in the mansion. She'd hid in the servants' quarters, waited safe and comfortable for help to come.

Except, it hadn't.

She'd died waiting and hadn't known it at the time. If she hadn't gone out and started looking, she could have sat there and waited until the place blew up. That wasn't a risk in this situation, but how long would they have to wait for help to come? Chief Irons hadn't listened to her and the others, had been determined to turn their story into something that it wasn't in an effort to protect Umbrella. Now that everything was out of control, would the police be able to do anything, or would Irons attempt to hold them back, ignoring the situation around him to maintain the lies he'd built? Even if the police acted, they didn't know what they were dealing with, wouldn't be able to figure things out until too late.

So they'd have to wait for help from, what? The military? How long would that take? Could they hold out that long in a zombie infested city?

More importantly, would Umbrella interfere in an attempt to buy time to cover up its involvement? The company couldn't possibly accomplish that, but it was sure to try.

Around her people were starting abandon their cars and walk, which served to guarantee that the roads would remain blocked. It wasn't the worst thing though. The jumble of cars would help slow the zombies if they made it that far. As for the people in their cars, they'd probably be safe. Rebecca didn't think that a zombie would be strong enough, or smart enough to get into a car. As long as people waited quietly, and didn't try to get out waiting would probably work out fine for them.

Somewhere not too far away, an ambulance siren wailed uselessly.

Car horns honked constantly now. An unending, angry drone that made her ears ring and the leeches squirm irritably.

Lost in thought, she nearly walked right through where another family was struggling to pick up the spilled contents of a wheeled suitcase.

It was easily one of the most absurd things she'd ever seen. The father was holding a machete, as he stood guard over two other, larger, wheeled suitcases, while his daughter picked the scattered items, an odd mixture of essentials like food, clothing and hygiene items, but also books, toys and trinkets.

"I'm sorry," Rebecca apologized, taking a step back when the man with the machete glared at her, "Do you need help?"

"Don't worry about it," the girl gave a worried laugh, as she picked up a book and shoved it into the suitcase, "I didn't realize I hadn't zipped it all the way. I was in kind of a hurry when we were getting out and…"

"Really, I can help," Rebecca couldn't help feeling sympathy for her, "If you don't mind."

The father gave Rebecca a hard look, one that made her distinctly uncomfortable. When she started backing away his expression softened.

"You look like you're the one who needs help," he looked past her, at the fires in the distance, "Are you meeting up with someone, or are you on your own?"

"On my own," she said nervously, not sure if saying that to him was the right thing or not. Even if he was traveling with his daughter, he was more than a little intimidating and the machete was only part of it.

He continued to look her over, then looked at his daughter, still working to pick up what she'd dropped.

"Leave the books, they're too heavy."

His comment earned him a reproachful look from the girl, but she did as told and finished getting everything back into the suitcase and zipped it up.

"Alright, we're good to go," giving the suitcase one last look over to be sure that it was shut tightly the girl stood up.

As she rose to her feet, Rebecca immediately noticed that her father wasn't the only one who was armed. She had a large kitchen knife in a sheath attached to her belt, and her untucked blouse shifted just enough to reveal a small pistol she was trying to keep hidden. They were better prepared for whatever was out there, even if they didn't know what it was. It made Rebecca wonder what the father was hiding under his unseasonably heavy jacket.

Their interactions seemingly over, Rebecca got ready to walk around them, maybe even cross to the other side of the street, only for the father to speak up.

"Don't go that way. It's where we came from and…"

He trailed off.

Nothing more needed to be said, the looks on his daughter's face made it clear what they'd encountered.

She wasn't sure why, but she felt the need to say something, explain what was really going on, "What the news is calling rioters aren't. They're infected with a virus. Umbrella made it. It makes people…crazy."

She couldn't say zombies, but crazy worked.

The man frowned.

"We should be safe," she continued, "It's not airborne, it's spread through bites, and maybe contact with contaminated fluids."

"It doesn't just make them crazy, just so you know. I –" the daughter started to speak only to be silenced by a glare from her father.

Rebecca could guess what that was about, and could understand why it was something they didn't want to discuss. At least they knew that the zombies were hard to stop, even if they didn't know what they were.

"It's connected to the cannibal murders, isn't it?" He asked, still glaring at his daughter.

"Yes," Rebecca said quickly, relieved that even at this late point in things, people were figuring out what was going on. It meant that even if Umbrella tried to cover things up, there would be people who would connect the dots and figure out the truth.

"Tell me what you know about it, we can talk as we walk," the man offered.

She followed him, not because being part of a group made her feel safer, to the contrary, she didn't trust him at all, even though he was traveling with his daughter. The one positive thing was that the daughter seemed relieved to have company, and she listened intently, eyes wide as Rebecca did her best to explain what she knew.

"I don't know too much," she said quickly, not wanting to give the wrong impression.

"You've seen enough to know what people are doing out there, and you say it's a virus. Start by explaining how you know that, or are you just guessing?" He didn't sound skeptical, so much as convinced that she didn't know as much as she thought she did.

She was used to that sort of thing, because of how young she was, it was something she could take in stride and not worry about.

"It's a long story, so I'm going to start at the beginning, okay?" She warned, figuring that she should give as much information as possible, before moving on to the really unbelievable parts, "You know how Mayor Warren wanted S.T.A.R.S. to have representatives from all sorts of different fields? I was their most recent hire, brought on as a medic, but also because of my knowledge of chemistry and science in general, or at least I was until…we were disbanded after what happened at the Spencer Estate."

The man nodded, "I thought you looked familiar. When the mayor was trying to justify that program, there were pictures of all of you on the news. I remember seeing you and thinking that it was proof of what a joke the whole thing was."

She couldn't really argue with that, S.T.A.R.S. had been designed to fail, but that hadn't been why she'd been brought onto the team, or at least not the entire reason.

"You said the virus makes people crazy, and that you get it from being bitten," the girl interrupted, sparing her the difficulty of trying to justify her being part of the elite team, "The Cannibal Murders, you were investigating them when everything happened, right? Is there a connection?"

"Yes!" Relief threatened to overcome her, the girl at least got it and had made explaining things a lot easier, "There sure is. You know how money was a big concern when Mayor Warren was getting the program off the ground?"

The man nodded, "It sounded like a huge waste of taxpayer money, then out of nowhere the majority of the project got funded by a private donor. But what's that have to do with anything?"

"Umbrella was the one who contributed the money, because they wanted to have a say in the program. That way, they could get one of their employees leading the organization. Captain Wesker headed S.T.A.R.S., but he was working for Umbrella first and foremost," Rebecca explained, "When…things happened, Umbrella had what was left of the team disbanded."

She stopped, not sure what to say next. How much of the story would be necessary and how much would be too much? It was a fine line and she was terrified of crossing it. If she couldn't make two people in the middle of it all believe her, then what chance did she stand convincing the world of Umbrella's involvement?"

"So you knew something was going on, but until this happened you didn't manage to put things together," the man finished for her, "I don't blame you though. A pharmaceutical giant making a strain of super rabies sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but I guess it makes sense. They'd release the virus and then make a vaccine, right?"

He couldn't have been much more wrong about the company's motivation, but she wasn't going to correct him, not when it would require her to explain things that she wasn't sure how to explain.

So, she'd managed to convince two people so far, which was a start.

Now if they managed to make it out of the city, it might actually mean something.

Having said as much as she could think of, Rebecca fell silent. It didn't take long for the man to start talking, not about anything in particular, just talking to pass the time. Despite everything, and much to the embarrassment of his daughter, he was surprisingly talkative.

Rebecca soon learned that he had a wife and two sons, who were safely out of the city, having left town to visit relatives. The last he'd spoken to them had been at the start of it all, telling them not to bother getting back to the city, that they'd meet up there with her, and probably spend time at their summer house until things settled down, if they settled down.

He didn't seem very optimistic about the situation in the city, and Rebecca couldn't blame him.

As he talked for the sake of talking, Rebecca thought over what she'd be doing when they reached safety.

Once they got out of the city proper, they would go their separate ways. Then, there would be a lot that she'd need to do and, if she wanted to try and look on the bright side of things, everything that was going on would certainly make it easier for her to get the truth out. News networks were bound to be reporting on the situation like crazy, and would want interviews with people from the city. If she was lucky, she could be one of those people and tell everything before Umbrella got the chance for damage control. Afterwards, they'd probably do everything they could to make her sound crazy, but there would be too many witnesses to what happened, who had seen firsthand what Umbrella's bioweapons did, and it would be only a small jump for people to believe that Umbrella was making monsters once people started talking about zombies.

The further they went, the fewer people they saw. Most of the cars in the streets had been abandoned, and the ones that still had people in them, Rebecca realized that they weren't really people anymore, when she got too close to one and the occupant lunged at her, repeatedly slamming their face against the closed window, as they tried to attack. Zombies, trapped in cars. They must have been bitten before they tried to escape, and then succumbed as they tried to escape. If people had been dying and changing in their vehicles, that explained why traffic accidents had been an issue from the start, and if first responders showed up and were bitten…

By the time anyone figured out what was going on, there might not be anyone left who could do anything about it.

The few people they did see in passing were all like them, hurrying along with backpacks, suitcases and whatever they could carry. Everyone else was probably safely hunkered down in their houses and apartments, waiting for things to pass. If not for the fires, she'd be doing the same thing.

One thing that she noticed about the people walking, was that they were all heading in the same direction, to the highway and out of the city. Knowing that others were attempting the same thing was reassuring, not so much because of safety in numbers, but because it suggested that maybe she wasn't making a terrible mistake.

Once she was out of the city, everything would be fine. She could walk down the median until things were safe, or she reached members of whatever disaster relief organization was overseeing the efforts being made to help, because things had been going on for long enough that by now, someone had to be starting to do something.

There it was again, the reoccurring theme of someone doing something. Short of Umbrella's private soldiers, what organization was equipped for something like this though, who would even know how to handle it? Zombies weren't exactly something that FEMA had a plan for as far as she knew. Maybe the CDC had some zombie contingency, but that was probably only for a hypothetical accident in one of their labs.

That was an idea, send one of her leeches anonymously to the CDC with a letter, telling them that it was possibly infected with the same virus that had been released in Raccoon City. That way they'd have a sample, something to work with. It might start a panic, they might try and find who sent the letter, but she didn't think that they'd have any luck. The most they could do would be check the note for fingerprints, and she was pretty sure that she didn't have those anymore. As far as she could tell, the leeches were using their tails to make up the tips of her fingers, so the most that she'd leave would be sucker marks.

She was looking at her hands, thinking that over when she heard screaming in the distance.

The man froze, his daughter getting behind him. They watched as a man covered in blood ran past them down the street. He was still alive, but not for long if all of the blood was his. Zombies in front of them, and depending on what happened to the man, there'd be at least one zombie behind them as well.

They were getting into the middle of things, but they had to keep going. The man took a map out of his pocket, checked it and reassured his daughter that they only had three or four more miles to go. It sounded like a long way, but Rebecca knew it wasn't. It wouldn't even take that much time, provided that they didn't encounter any difficulty.

It went without saying that they weren't that lucky.

Eventually, they got to a point where there weren't any other people in the streets, just zombies, though none were close enough to notice them. Just like in the training facility and mansion, the zombies didn't seem to be aware of much past twenty feet from them. Being on the opposite of the street was enough, especially since the zombies always tried to come at them in a straight line, getting stuck against all the abandoned cars in the road. The commotion they made would occasionally draw others in, but they were moving fast enough that it wasn't too much of a concern.

Some zombies noticed enough to sort of follow them, but they'd only be a problem if they slowed down. The man stopped talking, let go of one of the two suitcases he'd been pulling. His daughter dragged hers for a few more meters, and then abandoned that as well.

Being quiet and not stopping worked, until they reached a traffic circle.

The circle itself was jammed with wrecked cars, but it had worked to concentrate a large group of zombies in a single area. Going around would, in theory, be safer, but going across would be faster. Speed versus safety was an important thing to consider, and they stopped to discuss things. What was on either side of the circle was unknown, but past it, the streets looked relatively zombie free.

The man took out his map and scowled. Rebecca understood his thought process exactly, there was no telling what was down any of the side streets, if things were better or worse in the distance. One detour could lead to another, to another, and while they might not end up lost, they could easily end up in a much worse situation.

Rebecca could see a clear path through the circle, the only obstacles in it were the zombies trying to get to them. Making her decision, she pointed it out to the man and his daughter, "I'm going to distract them. As soon as they're all following me, you start moving."

She wasn't sure if she should have been pleased, or upset when he didn't even try to argue with her, "S.T.A.R.S. was made to deal with urban crime and disasters, so I guess you can trust your training. Catch up with us if you can, otherwise, good luck."

Rebecca nodded, not sure if she should try to agree, or disagree with what he'd just said. She did have some training, but none of it had been for anything like this, and out of everyone, she'd consistently preformed the worst during every exercise. The only thing she had going for her was the leeches, and they were something she couldn't mention.

Then he offered her his machete, saying that it was good for limbs, tree limbs, he corrected with a laugh, explaining that he used it for yardwork in their summer home, then he mentioned that he had a gun and some ammo for her too, and started to open up his suitcase.

She took the machete, but refused the gun, and started walking out into the middle of the traffic circle.

He called out to her in a loud whisper, not asking her to come back, but reminding her of the rout he planned to take, so that she could catch up with them.

Focused on the actual human survivors, the zombies ignored her. In her worry about getting out of the city, she'd managed to forget that the zombies had ignored the leech men and would ignore her in favor of live prey. That was easy enough to fix though.

Carefully making her way between two cars, she looked around for something to throw, found a bottle laying on the ground, and threw it at the nearest zombie. They might not respond to her presence, but they reacted when attacked, and sure enough it let out a gurgling moan and in her direction. The sound drew the attention of the others, and they began to converge on her.

The leeches in her backpack, which had been waiting patiently for a signal from her, began to move. She willed them to hold back and hoped that they understood. She was far enough away and the leeches were small enough that it was unlikely they'd be seen, but she didn't want to have to gather up a swarm of leeches, even a small one, before she could continue on her way.

The leeches understood, mostly. Some of them slithered out of the backpack to cling to her shoulders and crawl down her arms, but at least they didn't do anything more.

She knew how to use them to kill zombies, and while helpful, it was slow enough that it was best to use it only as a last resort. Besides, her goal was to draw the attention of the zombies in the area and keep them distracted, not kill them all. Though, as she climbed up onto a car to avoid the zombies, she realized that killing some of them might be necessary.

The man and his daughter were about half way through the circle, making good progress as he'd discarded his remaining suitcase to break into a slow jog. Only a few of the zombies were trying to get to them, and not having much luck thanks to all the cars in the way. If she was going to manage to rejoin them, she'd need to do something about, at least, some of the zombies closest to her, unless she wanted the whole swarm of them following her.

It wasn't like she was unarmed, the machete was a formidable weapon as far as gardening implements went, but she'd never been all that strong to begin with, certainly not strong enough to swing a machete with enough force to cut through bone, and she doubted that she'd be able to line up a strike along a joint with the way the zombies were moving. A strike to the skull would work best, crushing bone and maybe doing enough damage to kill one, but it would depend on where she hit.

She tried to think back to the medical training she had, where was the weakest point of the human skull, and was it something she'd actually be able to hit?

If she wanted to keep up with the others, she'd have to think fast.

Taking the machete in both hands, because she hadn't managed to figure out if she was stronger than she'd been before the leeches, or if her efforts to repair her broken bone would hold, she swung, aiming for the region of the pterion, because she was pretty sure that part of the skull, where four bones met, was one of the weakest places. If she recalled correctly, the bone there was pretty thin as well.

There was a crunch when the blade struck. Bone had broken for sure, though the zombie didn't stop, and she could feel the leeches in her arms and shoulders shifting in place from their attempts to dampen the impact.

When she pulled the blade back, she could see that there was a good sized dent in the side of the zombie's skull, an injury that would kill a human, but apparently not a zombie. It confirmed what she'd noticed during her previous encounters with them, they didn't need much more than their brainstem to keep functioning.

Knowing that didn't help her though, there was no way she'd be able to swing hard enough to accomplish that without damaging herself as well. It looked like she was going to need to rely on the leeches, but maybe she could help them along, save them the time of burrowing in through the eyes and all the way back. Brain tissue was soft enough, that they could damage it just by thrashing around, it was getting there that took time.

Picking up one of the leeches from her shoulder, she put it on the side of the machete blade, and waited for it to latch on with both its mouth and tail sucker. Hoping that her idea would work, she struck another zombie with the blade. The leech understood exactly what it needed to do, it was just a matter of seeing if it was possible.

Another jarring impact, and once again, she failed to kill the zombie. The leech crawled off the blade to remain behind when she jerked it free of the zombie's skull. It immediately crawled forward, and began to try and squeeze its way into the injury, between fragments of shattered bone.

Not wanting to risk losing any more leeches until she saw if her idea worked, she waited, watching as the zombie continued trying to get to her. She didn't have to wait long. Just like the zombies she'd dealt with in the woods, once the leech got in deep enough and did enough damage, it fell to the ground and didn't get back up. It worked faster than she'd expected, but not enough so that she'd be able to catch up with the man and his daughter before they were out of sight. Still, it worked, and if she kept track of how many leeches she used, she wouldn't have to worry about leaving any of them behind. One for each zombie, and there were maybe twenty zombies that were actually able to get near her, only eight of them having made it to where she was.

She took another leech and swung again.

Break bone and leave a leech behind to do the work.

Umbrella had been making weapons, and in ignoring Marcus' leeches, they'd made a mistake on that front, something she was thankful for, not because of what it meant for her, but because of what it meant in general.

If Captain Wesker had known what the leeches were capable of and had gone after them instead of the Tyrant, he might still be alive.

Or he might have ended up something like her.

She wasn't sure which was worse, him having his hands on a potent bioweapon, or him ending up an unkillable monster.

Two more strikes and two more zombies fell. She was almost halfway through.

The next swing was at a bad angle, the way the zombies were moving made it hard to hit the right spot each time, and this time she failed, instead hitting too high. The blade skidded across the thick bone of the top of the zombie's skull, and she felt the impact in her wrists. Little bones ground against each other, the leeches letting go of them and squirming. Her grip weakened as several small bones fell away, leaving her wrist feeling oddly loose. The leeches worked to compensate, gathering together and wrapping around the handle of the machete, a swarm of them covering her hands and helping her hold on. Later, there'd be time to assess the damage, for now she had to stay focused.

She was more careful with the next swing, and managed to hit where she'd been aiming, delivering a leech to burrow into its brain.

Five leeches were out, four zombies were down.

No, five.

The leech she'd left on the one she'd struck a glancing blow, had managed to get in either through an eye or the nose, she wasn't sure which. Either way, the results were the same as it reached the zombies brainstem and went to work.

Yes, it was a very good thing that Captain Wesker hadn't known what the leeches were capable of. If he'd gotten a swarm of them and managed to replicate what Marcus had accomplished, there was no telling what might have happened. If Umbrella had been able to breed the leeches, sell them for use, or use them on people to make a group of unkillable soldiers, the consequences would have been dire. She wasn't sure exactly what they'd be, but she knew that they'd be bad. The leeches were dangerous, and not just because they might carry the Tyrant virus. They'd be much more effective at killing people than they were at killing zombies, she didn't need her medical knowledge to be certain of that. The only way to kill a zombie was to destroy its brain, but there were so many other ways to harm a person.

After she got out of the city, she was going to need to be extremely careful about who she went to for help. The fact that Umbrella was as big as it was proved that there would be people who would see them as a potential weapon as soon as they found out about them. Those sort of people would be able to think of uses for them that she'd never be able to imagine.

Three zombies to go, as long as she dealt with them quickly enough. There was a chance that the zombies that had yet to get to where she was might ignore her if she didn't attack them.

The last two zombies trying to climb the car and get to her, weren't being cooperative. Neither of them was staying still long enough, or moving in a way that let her get a good angle to hit them in the side of the head. She settled for hitting one across the face with the flat end of the blade, in an attempt to shove it away. It worked, the zombie, not terribly dexterous to begin with, staggered half a step back and tripped over one of the bodies on the ground. For a short time it thrashed in place, clawing at the dead bodies until something must have clicked with whatever instincts it possessed, and it rolled over and began to eat. That was a good thing to know, that given certain circumstances the zombies would eat prey that wasn't freshly killed. There was probably some explanation for it, one that linked up with why they ignored her most of the time, but could be goaded into attacking.

The last zombie she didn't even bother trying to hit, she just moved over to the side of the car opposite it and slid off the roof. Dropping to the ground, she rolled under the car to hide from it and called the leeches back to her.

One by one, they left the dead zombies as the two that were still alive lost interest in her and wandered off.

The leeches were covered in slime and gore, the last one to come back taking its time, enough so that she reached out and grabbed it as soon as it was near enough. The leech had been eating, they all had, but this particular one had been hungrier than the others, and had wanted to get a few more bites before heading back. While the other leeches went into her backpack, the one she'd grabbed joined the ones making her hand. They moved to make room for it and she could feel them continue to move as they cleaned the blood and matter from it.

They were licking it clean.

Because to them, it was covered in food.

The leeches were disgusting, and that would never change.

Backing away from the zombies, she got out from under the car and began to make her way in the direction her temporary companions had gone. She wanted to run, get away from the zombies and back to the relative safety offered by numbers and being around someone who knew what they were doing, but she was afraid if she went any faster than a brisk walk, she'd draw the attention of the zombies.

Apart from a group, she was frightened again. The zombies wouldn't hurt her. Maybe they couldn't hurt her, but that didn't make what was going on any less frightening. She could still hear sirens in the distance, but they were far fewer, the same with the honking of car horns. What was getting more common was the crack of gunfire. The city sounded like a war zone, and with the smoke rising from the burning buildings, it looked like one too.

Up ahead, the streets were dark. It shouldn't have been a surprise that there would be sections of the city without electricity, given what was going on, but it was something that she hadn't planned for.

Reaching an intersection, she squinted up at the street signs. It was dark enough that she couldn't see too much, but she was pretty sure that she was supposed to make a left here or at the next intersection. She'd try here and if she didn't see any sign of anyone by the time she got to the next intersection, she'd turn around and try again.

The problem was, she didn't like the dark any more than the leeches liked bright light. She couldn't see, and while the leeches had ways around it when they were on their own, it wasn't something she could use.

To keep from tripping over anything, she had to divide her attention between the zombies in the streets and the ground in front of her.

If she'd been thinking, she would have brought a flashlight, but in all her time in the city, she'd never needed one before. Walking out in the woods had been one thing, she'd expected it to get dark there, but she never thought about the lights going out anywhere in the city itself.

Motion down the road drew her attention, and scrambling around pile of wrecked cars that blocked off the entire street and most of the sidewalk, she saw a pickup truck that was laying on its side, half on and half off the sidewalk. Three zombies were clawing at it, trying to get in.

She didn't think much of it, just seeing it as evidence that she'd gone the wrong way. If the man and his daughter had been through the area, the pair of zombies would have at least tried to follow them rather than continuing to try and get into the car. Her biggest concern was trying to decide whether she should press on and try to figure out where she was, or if she should turn around and try to figure out the right way to go, it didn't even occur to her to try and figure out why the zombies were trying to get into the truck, until she heard an out of place sound, a terrified whimper and watched as the zombies redoubled their efforts to get into the truck.

Someone was trapped inside.

Three zombies she could deal with easily enough, especially when they were distracted.

Taking a leech and placing it on the side of the machete, she got ready for what would hopefully be a very short, one-sided fight against the zombies. Having already figured out how things worked, two more leeches had emerged and were visibly clinging to the back of her hand, ready and waiting for when she needed them.

The first zombie never even turned to face her, before she struck it.

The second nearly grabbed her while she was readying a leech, prompting her to swing wildly.

The blade grated against bone, twisting and falling from her hand. At the same time, a frightened male voice called out from the cab of the truck.

"Is there someone out there? Help!"

Reassuring as it was to hear that they sounded unharmed, it wasn't as though they were in a position where they could help her, and she was very much in need of help.

As she scrambled for the blade, the third zombie grabbed the back of her jacket, causing her to fall face first to the ground. She rolled over, tried to shove it away from her with one hand, while continuing to reach for the machete with the other. The zombie moved much faster than she'd anticipated, and she ended up pressing her open hand against its face. Her fingers slipped against the gore, coating it and she felt teeth close around them. The leeches squirmed, letting go of each other to avoid being bitten in half. More bones were lost as her hand disintegrated into a writing mess of leeches, mouths facing outwards as they attacked. They'd learned from her, but they'd also noticed what Marcus had done when he had pursued her through the training facility.

The zombie continued to bit and claw ineffectually, leeches parting like water to avoid injury.

Her fingertips brushed against handle of the machete. Immediately, leeches stretched their bodies, crawling over each other to wrap around it.

After repeatedly being used to break bone, the blade's edge was badly bent, but even if it hadn't been, the zombie was too close for her to have the room to swing it. Instead, she adjusted her grip and repeatedly slammed the back of its handle against the zombie's face, until she felt bone break, first its jaw so that it couldn't keep biting her, and then, as she had with the others, the side of its skull. The writhing black mess of leeches that was her hand, pulled chunks of flesh from its skull, exposing bone. She could feel where it was broken, an area when were was some give instead of solid bone. The leeches grabbed onto it, feeling for the edges and pulling. More leeches pushed their way in.

The zombie shuddered and died, falling heavily on top of her.

Rolling it off of her, she called the leeches still on it back to her, before they could start to wander.

"Hello?" the person in the truck called out again, "Is there anyone out there? Are they gone?"

"Yes," she spoke as loudly as she dared, hoping that he'd hear her, "But keep quiet or more of them will hear you."

"Please, let me out," he was quieter this time, still speaking too loud for her comfort, but no longer shouting.

"I will, I just need to…" she watched as the leeches making her hands rearranged themselves, and returned to creating the illusion of normalcy. She rubbed her hands together, relieved that she didn't feel teeth when she did. The last thing she needed was to worry about them accidentally biting someone. Satisfied, she went over to take a look at the truck.

There was enough light for her to see that the windshield and passenger window weren't broken. That was good, no broken glass meant that it would be safer, but it also made things harder for her.

How was she going to get him out?

"Are you alright?" she asked, starting to work on a plan, "Can you move?"

She could see him, laying on his side, still in the driver's seat, and she needed to know if the reason he hadn't moved was because he was injured. He didn't sound hurt, just frightened, but there was no telling what she couldn't see.

"Yes," a pause, "No, my seatbelt's stuck."

"Alright," that complicated matters some, but it wasn't unexpected, "Does the window at the back of the cab open? If it does I've got a knife I can use to cut you free."

"Oh, a knife?" just talking seemed to be working to calm him down, "I've got a pocketknife. If I can get it, I can probably handle that myself."

By the sound of his voice, he wasn't much older than her, if he even was older than her. It was just as likely that he was a high school kid with his learner's permit. That would certainly explain the situation he'd managed to get himself into.

She watched as he wiggled in place, pulled the knife out of his pants' pocket and begin to work at freeing himself. Not being in a state of panic worked wonders in most situations. He talked as he cut and she listened, pacing back and forth in front of the truck, as she kept an eye out for zombies. There were none so far, but she could hear them a street or two over.

"I was driving along, had just gotten out of the traffic jam when there were these guys standing in the road. Just standing there," he explained as he cut himself free, "I slowed down, honked the horn and they just stood there, well actually, one of them ran at me. I tried to turn, get out of the way before I hit him, or he hit me and I jumped onto the curb. I wasn't going fast or anything, but the way he was running or something, maybe it was just bad luck, but when he hit the truck it was just enough to tip me over. I called for help, but they just stood around, hitting at the truck and making horrible noises. What's going on?"

"It's a virus," having explained once, it was easier this time and she suspected that with each retelling it would continue to do so, because it was a story that she had a feeling that she'd be repeating a lot in the near future, "It makes people go crazy and attack each other. Umbrella made it. I don't know how it got out, but there are infected people all over the city."

"Oh, so that's why those guys were…"

It was hard to tell if he was in shock, or just taking what she said remarkably well. Then again, he'd spent who knew how many hours trapped while three zombies tried to get to him, so he'd had plenty of time to come to terms with what the virus did to people.

"It's pretty bad, but if we get out of the city we'll be safe. Someone's got to be working on a way to stop the virus by now, and they'll probably be on the outskirts of the city," she didn't know if that was true, but it made sense. It wasn't like they'd let the city burn and the virus spread.

"Got it!" he interrupted her as he finished cutting the last section of his seatbelt, and managed to twist and turn until he was able to stand up. The cab of the truck was small enough that it was easy for him to stand up and reach the door. Unlocking it, he pushed it open and started to pull himself out.

Rebecca went over to offer him a hand, only to realize that she was a mess from having a zombie land on top of her. The mess wasn't a problem for her, but it wouldn't look good if they encountered anyone else. The last thing she needed was for someone to mistake her for a zombie and shoot her. It wasn't like it would kill her or even hurt that much, but it was something that she didn't want to have to explain.

Putting down her backpack, she pulled off the jacket. It was mostly her hands and arms that had been bitten and clawed at, and the zombie's blood hadn't managed to soak through yet, so her shirt underneath was mostly fine, which was good since she hadn't thought to bring a change of clothing, just a knife, water and, of course, the leeches.

The boy managed just fine without her help, hopping out and landing on his feet. He looked around, at the orange and black streaked sky in the distance, where the fires were still burning, then he looked at the dead zombies on the ground and froze.

"Don't worry," she said quickly, when she saw that he was staring at the bodies, "They're like animals, working on instinct alone. They don't think, they don't respond, they just attack."

"You…you killed them?" his eyes were wide, his face pale.

"I had to," as she spoke she recalled how it had been when she killed her first zombie, frightening, horrible, but she'd gotten used to it. Knowing that they weren't really people anymore had helped, as had the fact that it was either them or her. She still wouldn't have been able to imagine getting to the point where she'd be able to kill one more or less with her bare hands, if directing leeches to dig into a zombie's brain counted, "If they got to you they would have killed you."

He took a step closer, looked at the bodies and saw the condition they were in. Torn clothing, bite marks, but also the injuries to their skulls.

How much had he been able to see while he was trapped?

It was dark enough that he couldn't have seen the leeches, and he didn't know how the virus was transmitted, so it didn't matter that he'd seen her get bitten repeatedly.

"Where are we going?" he asked, looking at her expectantly.

"To the highway and away from here."

It was an answer he was willing to go along with, and between the two of them they were able to figure out where they were and where to go.

Traveling with him was easy enough. He was more than happy to run from any zombies they encountered, and it didn't matter that he was faster than her since the zombies weren't a danger for her and she was always able to catch up. Neither of them was one-hundred percent sure about exactly what streets they had to take, but between the two of them, they managed to figure things out until they started seeing signs for the highway, then it was simply a matter of following them.

Further proof that they were going in the right direction was that occasionally they'd see other…survivors. At this point, she was willing to think of them as survivors. None of them had any interest in banding together, though she couldn't blame them. It was clear from looking at her that she'd been in a fight, and anyone who'd made it this far had probably figured out how the zombies worked, and knew that anyone who'd been bitten was a danger. No one was shooting at them at least, which was a relief. Occasionally, she'd see zombies or hear gunshots nearby, reminding them that, though they were closer to safety with every step, they still weren't out of danger.

By the time they reached the highway, the two of them were part of a large, loosely held together group, united only by the fact that they were all heading in the same direction. The only conversation taking place was between people who had been together to begin with. That changed when they reached the roadblock.

There were no relief organizations waiting at the highway when they made it there, no rescuers, just makeshift barricades and notices posted on them that the whole city was under quarantine, and no one was allowed in or out. Whoever had put up the barricades was long gone, and had left no indication that they planned to return.

Other people had made it there before them, including the man and his daughter from earlier. They waved at Rebecca, called her over and explained what she could already see. Whoever had been there was long gone, but they'd left some supplies, cases of instant soup cups, something that had been a staple for her thought college, and bottled water. She was thankful for the water and, feeling slightly greedy, immediately drank two bottles to keep the leeches happy and slipped a third into her backpack. She still had her thermos, but she wasn't sure how long she'd be stuck away from any source of water, and she needed to keep the leeches happy. She, and they, were thankful for the water.

Reaching the relative safety of the highway and the abandoned roadblock was a start, but it didn't feel right staying there.

It was unnerving, there was no sign that the place had been overrun, no bodies or shell casings, just an abandoned roadblock. They hadn't even left an explanation of where they'd gone, directions for the survivors to follow so they could get to actual help.

A single small plane passed overhead, circling once before vanishing into the distance.

"Maybe they're elsewhere, trying to organize a push into the city, rescue the people who are still trapped?" Rebecca suggested, even though she knew that it was unlikely. Whoever had been there, had left for a reason and she didn't like that she couldn't figure out what that reason was, "The signs say to wait, but maybe we should keep going."

Because there was no telling when they'd return, or if they'd get there before the zombies that were sure to come. Yes, the city was supposed to be under quarantine, and she felt more than a little guilty about ignoring that when she was one of the things that they were probably trying to keep from getting out, but this was a matter of life and death for other people too, people who could still be killed by zombies.

At this point, the only thing she knew for sure was that the further they got from the city, the safer they were.

So she left the abandoned roadblock and kept going, enough people following along behind her that she didn't feel bad about it. Occasionally she'd look behind, stare at the city in the distance. The fires had spread, a hazy orange glow showing their progress. No one was there to put them out and they'd continue to spread until they burned themselves out, because she didn't think that any firefighters would be coming any time soon. No rescue efforts, no teams to help the people who managed to make it out, just the plane, which had made a second pass.

Rebecca didn't know what to make of it, but she wanted to take it as a sign that someone was going to send help, that the plane was part of some larger effort being organized. The problem was, it was too dark to make out any details of the plane.

It was a mystery that would be solved in time, when they got to safety, wherever that was. Maybe the rescuers had pulled back to the nearest rest area on the highway to better organize.

As far as she could tell, the highway was clear of zombies and none of the people walking down it were infected, so that wasn't a concern, but the road itself was cluttered with wrecked and abandoned cars, some of which had been pushed out of the way. She and the other survivors followed that cleared path, left from either the arrival or departure of whoever had set up the barricade.

There were conversations taking place, all of them hushed and since she wasn't a part of any of them, Rebecca ignored them. Everyone had worries of their own and so did she, hers were just different. She didn't have friends or family in the city to fret over, just the contents of her apartment, so her biggest concern was getting stuck outside during the day. The weather channel had said that it was going to be a bright and sunny day, and she hadn't brought a watch so she didn't know how many hours she had left until dawn. Even then, she wasn't sure how far she'd have to go to find a place to stay. She could always wait it out in the woods, she supposed, but would mean losing most of a day when every second counted. The world needed to know about Umbrella and its Tyrant project.

So she kept going, hoping that she could make it those last few miles to the rest area, and the safety she imagined was there. She tried to imagine what would be there. Medical tents of course, they'd want to make sure that none of the people arriving were infected. She'd have to find a way to avoid any examination that would reveal that she wasn't alive, but just by looking at her they wouldn't be able to see that anything was wrong, so she might be able to do it. There'd be hot food most likely, and maybe tents and sleeping bags set up in the parking lot. If she needed to, she could spend the day in one of them. There might even be busses, taking the survivors further away from the city, to some place where they could get in touch with relatives and figure out where to go next.

When she got there, she'd see about calling her parents, letting them know that she was alright. Maybe after that, she'd call Professor Rice and figure things out with him, because she still had the leeches and winter to worry about.

Several people in the group stopped, looking up and listening. One of them pointed skyward.

Rebecca heard it before she saw anything, the drone of engines.

Lights came into view not long afterwards. Three more planes were approaching, flying higher and faster than the first. They slowed down as they approached the city.

Something was about to happen, she just didn't know what and wasn't sure how to ask. If Chris Redfield, or Barry, or anyone else from S.T.A.R.S. was there, they might have known, but she didn't and for that reason she kept quiet. Watching and waiting would be enough.

An older looking man stopped watching, turned around and slowly lowered himself to the ground, face down, hands folded over his head. A few other people followed suit.

The conversation that had started when the planes had first been spotted began to die off, dropping down to nervous whispers.

Several people started running as fast as they could.

"What are you guys doing?" someone, Rebecca couldn't see who or where they were, wondered.

It was a good question, probably one that everyone still standing and watching had on their minds. No one answered, but the answer presented itself.

A flash lit up the sky, the city itself seemed to tremble and the glow of the fires vanished, blotted out by thick, black dust.

By the time the sound of the blast reached them, the next bombs had been dropped.

The sound echoed off the mountains like the end of the world, going on and on like it would never end.

Dust rose into the sky and slowly began to settle, fires continued to burn, but Raccoon City was gone.


	17. Epilogue

Rebecca looked at the pile of letters, magazines and boxes that had come in the mail that morning. It was going to be another busy day, but that was fine. She had plenty of time to sort through everything before heading to work, and it would, like always, be a slow night, so she'd have plenty of time to read. That was one of the nice things about working the night shift at a gas station, there was always time for her to keep up with her reading. The other good thing was that it let her avoid contact with people, because there was no point in taking any chances.

She'd never imagined herself working a job like that, but it was safe. The fact that she washed down everything she touched at the end of her shift wasn't seen as odd, just that she was serious about keeping things clean.

She still didn't know if she was contagious and she didn't want to take any chances. So far, the information she'd managed to get her hands on had indicated that the Tyrant virus wasn't as contagious as people had been afraid of at first, it was simply that it went symptomatic so fast, and zombies were so aggressive that people hadn't been able to react in time.

There wasn't going to be another Raccoon City, or so she told herself, because when she was alone with nothing to distract her, it was too easy to imagine worst case scenarios, especially when she was biking to and from work in the dark. Then she found herself listening to noises in the woods, wondering if the shadow she passed was a tree moving in the breeze, or if there was a zombie out there ready to stagger out and attack the next person that came by. After three months, she was even starting to get used to the trip, mostly. Eventually, she'd save up her money and see about getting a car, but that was a ways off.

There were a lot of things a person could get used to, so maybe the dark would stop bothering her eventually. It wasn't like she didn't know where she was going, or that there was any chance of her getting lost.

And out here there was nothing waiting in the darkness that could hurt her, that was something she had to keep reminding herself.

The worst was over.

A leech crawled across the kitchen table, looking to see if there was anything left over from breakfast. Frowning, Rebecca picked it up before it could get to the pile of mail and carried it over to the sink, where several others were swimming in the dishes that she'd been putting off washing.

A person could get used to a lot of things, but not everything.

Nearly a year had passed, and she still didn't like them. She probably never would, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Sitting back down, she began to divide the letters based on whether or not she recognized who they were from, and how urgent it was to answer them. A lot of them were probably form letters, responses from various politicians thanking her for her concerns in careful, bland terms. She'd been writing a lot of letters to politicians lately, spelling out the dangers of researching B.O.W.s , but also urging careful thought. After all, poorly worded and hastily passed laws meant that it was, at the moment, illegal to work on a vaccine for the Tyrant virus. While she agreed that the virus was dangerous, banning any legitimate organizations from working with samples of it would only make things worse when the next outbreak happened, and she was sure that it was a matter of when, not if. Raccoon City had been destroyed, but she'd gotten out.

And there was no telling what might have survived in the ruins. Despite the government's efforts to control the story and keep people from panicking, what to do about the ruins of Raccoon City was something that everyone had an opinion about.

The newly formed Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance was demanding permission to go in and clear the ruins, but the quarantine was being strictly maintained. Hopefully, more strictly than when she and the other survivors had been leaving the city.

She respected what the BSAA was doing and was one of the more vocal supporters of their endeavor to get access to the ruins, because if they didn't someone else would.

Not that it really mattered, because the Tyrant virus was out there already. Umbrella was an international company, and she doubted that only its Raccoon City branch had samples of the virus, not to mention the countless employees that had disappeared when the company had fallen apart. If even one of them had a sample of the virus…

The Tyrant virus was out there, somewhere, and work needed to be done on a vaccine, and the BSAA needed more support, and the public needed to be educated about the virus and…

She was doing the best she could, but she was only one person, even if she wasn't exactly working alone.

A good number of the letters came from an assortment of doctors, professors, scientists and people with justifiable concerns about the direction things were going. She was at the center of it all, helping people get in touch, share research, findings and information, putting them in touch with each other, and directing them towards politicians who she felt were most likely to listen.

It was working too, there was serious discussion going on of a re-classification of biosafety levels to take into account 'aggressive vectors', which was what zombies were being referred to in most papers. Zombies still weren't classified as B.O.W.s , a term that, at the moment was too nebulous to be more than a handy phrase for talking about the kind of monsters Umbrella had made, and something for politicians to condemn when they needed to make decisive statements without actually doing anything. Still, progress was being made.

No one had been able to confirm anything, since doing so would mean putting their career at risk, but some of the people Rebecca had been in touch with had alluded to zombies being kept in various facilities for research purposes. Since they were still 'people' who needed medical treatment at properly secure facilities, not B.O.W.s , they were a convenient loophole for researching the Tyrant virus.

It was a loophole she was looking to close, because one accident, one misjudgment and there was no telling what would happen. Especially troubling, were the necessarily vague reports of further mutations and increased aggression in some of the zombies. They lined up with the odd one she'd encountered in the woods, and she didn't like the implications of that. If the virus continued to mutate in its host, continued to mutate its host, there was no telling what might be lurking in the ruins of Raccoon City, all the more reason for the BSAA, or someone to get in there and take a look at things.

And thinking of the BSAA, there was a letter in the pile from Jill Valentine, one of the organization's founding members. Chris was a member as well, and the two of them had been trying to get her to join. She'd been politely declining each time they asked. Hoping that this letter wasn't another invitation, she opened it.

Jill was just thanking her for the efforts she'd made in getting scientists to back the organization. From the start, the BSAA had very little trouble getting qualified individuals for desk jobs and field operatives, though so far, there'd been no chances for them to see any action. The trouble had been getting scientists to back what they were doing, and help them to figure out how to better deal with the B.O.W.s they might encounter. There were just too many unknowns, and no one had been willing to throw their lot in with the newly formed organization.

Through hard work and determination, Rebecca had been able to get a handful of individuals to start offering advice and sharing information with the BSAA.

Letters from researchers were sorted into different piles based on whether she recognized the names on them, and if she'd been expecting to hear from them.

Ones from politicians were opened immediately, and form letter responses were discarded. Actual replies went into their own pile for her to look over and respond to, or send to someone better able to continue the conversation.

There were plenty of journals and articles that were sent for her to read and, she'd bring those to work with her to read over at her leisure.

The last item that had come in the mail that day was a package from Professor Rice. She'd kept in touch with him, because there might come a time when she'd need his expertise on leeches again. She'd let him assume that the leeches she'd been writing to him about were gone, destroyed with Raccoon City, but she figured if she ever needed to know something she'd be able to ask him.

Hopefully, she wouldn't need to ask him anything again, but it was still nice to keep in touch with someone she thought of as a friend, even if most of the time what he sent her were articles and studies he thought she'd find interesting based on their earliest conversations. Usually, she threw them all out without reading anything. She had to deal with leeches enough every day, that she didn't want to read about them from a scientific perspective.

This time though, what he'd sent her was actually useful, copies of articles Marcus had been involved in, and a list of names of some of his associates prior to his abandoning the academic world entirely to focus full time on his research with Spencer. The Professor had included a letter explaining that he figured it might be interesting to her, a way for her to find someone else who might know more about the leeches she'd found. After what had happened, Professor Rice was more inclined to believe that there was something unique about them, and had been willing to accept that it was possible that they'd been working together.

She'd read the papers that night, though she doubted there'd be anything directly useful to her in them. Still, there might be someone else in the circle of people that she was in touch with that would be able to use the information. When she got the chance, she'd make copies of it and ask around to see who was interested in one.

It was a lot of work for her to be doing, but she had time. The leeches didn't really sleep, just rested in shifts and as a result she didn't sleep either. If she wanted to, she could get the leeches to disperse and when that, happened she sort of entered a dreamlike state, but it wasn't the same as sleeping and before long, the leeches would get bored and come back together. Or at least she thought that it was boredom, because she usually got up to a mess of one kind or another.

Another leech crawled across the table towards her, and Rebecca stared down at it. They were growing quickly, most of them were already around half the size of Marcus'. Another year and they'd be fully grown, if they really were anything like medical leeches. That wasn't a terribly pleasant thought, since she was already losing some of the dexterity in her fingers thanks to the size of the leeches. She'd long since gotten rid of the last of the bones from her fingers, burying them in the backyard, and the leeches were more inclined to just wrap around things, or use their suckers to try and hold things than properly mimic the movements of human hands. She could still preform most tasks perfectly fine and she had no trouble typing, but her handwriting was getting pretty bad. How she'd manage when they were fully grown was a very real concern. It wasn't something she spent too much time dwelling on, though.

There was no telling what would happen between now and then. Nothing bad, she hoped, but who knew?

The leech on the table reared up, waving its front half through the air.

She could feel the attention of numerous other leeches hiding throughout the kitchen.

"I know," she sighed, "You're hungry."

So far, she'd only made breakfast for herself, toast with jam, because she liked the texture of it, but it hadn't been enough for the leeches.

Half a dozen were clinging to the handle of the refrigerator door. So far, they hadn't figured out how to open it up on their own, but they were getting stronger and it was only a matter of time.

There wasn't much to choose from in the fridge, she'd need to go shopping again soon, for herself at least.

Grabbing a package of something unidentifiable, probably possum from the look of it and the small bones she could see, she put it in the sink for the leeches. Working nights meant that she had no trouble finding roadkill on the way home to supplement their diet. They liked it and it saved money on groceries, not that money was much of a problem. She lived within her means and honestly didn't need much.

She had her job and she'd written a few articles for magazines, mostly about her experience in the final hours of Raccoon City, and the danger of B.O.W.s, that she'd gotten paid for.

It was something that she could tell her parents about when they called, better than telling them that she was working at a gas station and eating roadkill, because when she looked at it that way her situation seemed pretty awful.

The thing was, that wasn't the only way to look at things.

She could dwell on the fact that she was dead, or she could focus on how there was something left of her, something that wanted to do good and help people. Even if it was all just the leeches, they were still doing the right thing.

And that had to count for something.


End file.
